Luanda – Angola and Namibia central banks signed Friday a memorandum of understanding to facilitate trade between the two countries and combat money laundering.
The memorandum, signed by the governors of the National Bank of Angola (BNA), José de Lima Massano, and of the Bank of Namibia, Johannes Gawaxab, updates the existing one on matters related to activities carried out by the two central banks.
José de Lima Massano, said the memo includes issues related to control of financial flows between the two countries and banking supervision, adding that the BNA has been working on the improvement of the payment system to enable commercial and private transactions to be easier.
” (…) What we understand is to take a bigger step, not only cash, the exchange of the Kwanza for the Namibian Dollar, but to have more modern payment instruments, including the debit cards of the ATM network and also to allow commercial transactions such as appeals to letters of credit to take place in the currency of the two countries,” Massano said.
The BNA governor said the path taken is technically more demanding, “because we want the payment infrastructures to work and dialogue, allowing transactions to occur quickly, safely, and the decision we took was to have the Kwanza as currency of the payment system in our region.
We will start with Namibia, but our intention is to have the Kwanza as a payment currency in our region”, Massano said.
As for the intention of creating a single currency for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, the BNA governor said the path would take some time, adding that the region has a payment system that has the rand as the payment currency, and that the aim is to have other currencies of the countries that make up the region, with Kwanza seeking to be one of those currencies.
The Governor of the Bank of Namibia, Johannes Gawaxab, on the other hand, said this is a job that has been done for some time, pointing out that the focus of the memorandum is on trade facilitation, illicit flows of capital that happens at the borders of the two countries and all the challenges that emerges from it.
“We have the issue of illicit flows of capital, working groups are being set up, to adjust matters in relation to facilitation and illicit flows of capital,” Gawaxab said.
The memorandum will enable exchanges between the two financial institutions at a time when the two central banks have agreed to improve trade facilitation by using current and regional cross-border payment system arrangements to ensure faster remittances.
Source: Angola Press News Agency
