Angolan central bank looks to stem currency slump

Angola's central bank tightened currency liquidity at an emergency meeting on Thursday, after the currency of Africa's second largest oil exporter weakened a further 6 percent this week.
The kwanza has shed nearly 30 percent against the dollar this year as a steep fall in oil prices has hit Angola's economy, the third largest in sub-Saharan Africa.

Dollars

Currencies across the continent have been hammered by a broad-based slump in commodity prices.
Several measures taken this week, including devaluing the kwanza, are being used to increase foreign exchange reserves and support the local currency, traders said.
The kwanza was officially trading at 135.96 per dollar, according to the Bank of Angola's (BNA) website.
But on the streets of the capital Luanda, informal currency sellers were setting their own rates and doing a booming trade, selling a single dollar for as much as 250 kwanza, close to double the rate set by the central bank.
"There no dollars," said Husman, a 29 year-old Congolese migrant working illegally as a currency trader.
Illegal trade in foreign currency has flourished, particularly in the Mártires do Kifangondo district, near Luanda's international airport, where tourists and middlemen for importers jostle to get their hands on scarce dollars.
"I am afraid to say that the U.S. dollar is gonna be even more costly later today, if you don´t buy it now," Husman told Reuters, giving only his first name for fear of reprisals from policemen regularly conducting raids in the area.
The Bank of Angola devalued the kwanza on Monday, to 135.4 to the dollar, following a similar move last week when it accepted a rate of 149.9 per dollar at a currency auction. B]
Analyst Anthony Lopes Pinto said the BNA was likely to keep devaluing the kwanza until speculative margins had been eroded, something black market traders say is unlikely to happen.
On Thursday, the bank raised its standing lending facility, the rate it charges to lend to primary dealers, to 12.5 percent from 12 percent, it said in a statement. It raised the standing facility liquidity absorption rate at which banks can borrow money through repurchase agreements, to 1.75 percent from zero.
The central bank's benchmark interest rate was left unchanged at 10.5 percent.
"This is definitely a tightening of monetary policy," said Anthony Lopes Pinto, managing Director Imara Securities Angola.