The decision, taken this Thursday at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (CPM) of the National Bank of Angola (BNA), to include large companies in the liquidity line for the purchase of public securities, is intended to provide direct support to the productive sector and alleviate pressure on the treasury of these "large employers".
The support, the BNA stresses in a statement, will allow the continuation of the activities of large companies and, consequently, the maintenance of jobs.
On 27 March, the governor of Angola's central bank, José de Lima Massano, had announced the creation of a global facility of up to 100 billion kwanzas so that companies outside the financial area with public securities could discount them from commercial banks.
"In a facility of up to 100 billion kwanzas granted by the National Bank of Angola, some companies, either by choice of investment in the past or by settlement of public debts, for example, received public bonds and may at this time have an interest in disposing of those public bonds competitively in order to have access to liquidity," he explained.
José de Lima Massano stressed, at the time, that the decision allows "these securities to be discounted and these companies to have access to liquidity without necessarily having to make sharp discounts on the securities they have in their portfolio".
At the meeting held this Thursday, in an early ordinary session to analyse the recent behaviour of the main economic indicators, the BNA decided to maintain the basic interest rate at 15.5 per cent, the interest rate of the permanent liquidity absorption facility, with an overnight maturity of 0 per cent and to maintain at 22 per cent and 15 per cent the compulsory reserve coefficients in national and foreign currency, respectively.
"With the main interest rate unchanged, the National Bank of Angola reaffirms its commitment to controlling inflation, monitoring the monetary base, the operational variable of monetary policy, whose target in terms of daily average in the quarter is set at 2.055 billion kwanzas by June 2020," the statement said.
Ensuring the permanent liquidity-providing facility by making up to 100 billion kwanzas available to commercial banks is also one of the objectives to "make their access to liquidity predictable and stable, should the need arise".
The Monetary Policy Committee has reiterated its commitment to maintaining price stability in the economy and, to this end, will continue to analyse all the determinants of inflation on both the supply and demand sides.
In March of this year, the national consumer price index published by the National Statistical Institute showed a monthly change of 1.85 per cent above the 1.72 per cent recorded in February, bringing accumulated inflation to 5.73 per cent and year-on-year inflation to 19.62 per cent, above the level observed in the same period of 2019 (17.56 per cent).
The food and non-alcoholic beverages class continues to be the main factor of pressure on prices in the economy, having contributed with 61.74 per cent.
