Angola: SADC defends insertion of kwanza in regional electronic payment system

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Angola: SADC defends insertion of kwanza in regional electronic payment system

12:44 CAT | 02 Oct 2019

File photo: Lusa

A Southern African Development Community (SADC) official on Tuesday called on the Angolan authorities to put the kwanza into the integrated regional electronic payment system, so that the 16 member states will function as a single country in this regard.

The Chairperson of the SADC Payment Scheme Administration Body (PSMB), Zimbabwean Andrew Mugari, said that the kwanza, Angolan currency, has not yet been included in the Community’s Integrated Electronic Settlement System (RGTS), in force since June 2013, whose current reference currency is the South African rand.

“What we expect from our users, including Angola, is that they work to start using the system and that they guide commercial banks so that, if there is a need for some client to transfer amounts from Angola to any country in the region, it can do so on the same day,” he told journalists in Luanda.

On the sidelines of a conference on RGTS, which runs until Thursday in the Angolan capital, Mugari said that the body’s intention was to transform the SADC, made up of 16 member states, “into a single” country in order for the payment system to be uniform.

“For the payment system to be made in real time and some customer who wants to make payment between countries is made on the same day,” he said, explaining that the South African central bank is the intermediate unit for that process.

In addition to the rand, the body also hopes that all currencies in the region will be included in the platform and intends to include the US dollar in the system, a claim, however, conditioned by the “strict criteria” of the US Federal Reserve.

“The Federal Reserve has very broad criteria which we are trying to overcome in order to be part of the system. Our hope was that now we would have established the dollar on the platform, but considering the demands of the Federal Reserve, we call for each SADC country to be included in its system,” he stressed.

Financial inclusion at the level of Africa is one of the themes that animates this meeting that brings together specialists from various African banks in Luanda and takes place under the auspices of the National Bank of Angola (BNA).

Source: Lusa