The Governor of the Bank of Mozambique, Ernesto Gove, has recently announced that the bank intends to set limits on the use abroad of Mozambican credit and debit cards, as part of a package of measures to shore up the country’s currency, the metical.
Gove stated that the central bank would introduce a range of measures intended to stabilize the currency, and eventually reverse the depreciation which sparked off price rises, as companies found that the metical price for everything they imported suddenly rose substantially. This depreciation threatened the government’s target for an inflation rate in 2015 of no more than 5.6 per cent.
He said that huge amounts of money were leaving the country through the unrestrained use of credit and debit cards abroad, and that this type of spending has risen dramatically.
“Three years ago the use of bank cards abroad drained the country of around 300 million US dollars a year, but today the figure is 800 million dollars a year. The owner of one card used it for purchases abroad in one year in excess of two million dollars”.
Gove also said that foreign exchange legislation would be enforced. Under the law exporters who are paid in foreign currency can only keep 50 per cent of it in foreign currency accounts. “We will see whether this provision is being obeyed”, he said
