Bank of Mozambique Keeps Key Interest Rates At Their Current Levels
The Bank of Mozambique (BM) has decided to keep its key interest rates at their current levels, state news agency AIM reported late on Monday.
According to AIM, in what was almost certainly its last meeting of the year, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee announced that the Standing Lending Facility (which is the interest rate paid by the commercial banks on money borrowed from the central bank on the Interbank Money Market) will remain at 9.5 percent.
AIM says this follows five cuts in the rate earlier this year, most recently in November. At the beginning of 2012, the Standing Lending Facility rate was 15 percent.
The interest rate paid by the central bank to the commercial banks on money they deposit with it (the Standing Deposit Facility) remains at 2.25 percent, while the Compulsory Reserves Coefficient – the amount of money that the commercial banks must deposit with the Bank of Mozambique – remains at eight percent.
The statement from the Monetary Policy Committee noted with concern continuing falls in the world market prices of some of Mozambique’s main exports. Should this trend continue, it warned, Mozambique’s current account deficit will worsen.
Over the past month, the price of Mozambique’s main export, aluminum, has fallen by 4.4 percent.
The price of thermal coal, now being produced on a large scale at the open cast coal mines in Tete province, fell by 8.4 per cent, while the price of cotton fell by 2.6 per cent.
On the other hand, the prices of coking coal rose by 2.9 percent, and of natural gas by 1.7 percent.
The price of some key imports, notably liquid fuels, is also dropping. At the end of December, the price of a barrel of Brent Crude was $111.79. But on December 11 it was quoted at $108.56.
Mozambique’s total bill for petroleum products is estimated at $700 million a year.
Source African Press Agency
African News from NetNewsPublisher.com
Category: Africa
