{Feb 25 Democratic Republic of Congo’s central bank plans to buy Congolese francs and increase the percentage of deposits banks must keep at the central bank, in an effort to prop up the national currency.}<\/p>\n
Congo’s exchange rate has remained steady and inflation last year was less than 1 percent, but falling oil and mineral prices over the past year are putting pressure on the franc.<\/p>\n
Congo is Africa’s top copper producer, and its various extraction industries account for some 98 percent of the country’s export earnings.<\/p>\n
Foreign currency reserves as of Monday stood at $1.36 billion, enough to cover six weeks of imports, down from $1.74 billion one year ago.<\/p>\n
The central bank said it would inject foreign currency into the exchange market and increase the percentage of term deposits banks must hold with it from 7 to 9 percent to reduce pressure on the franc.<\/p>\n
The comment came in a summary of a meeting on Tuesday of its Committee of Monetary Policy that was seen by Reuters on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The franc-to-dollar exchange rate rose on the parallel market from 945 in December to 955 this week, the BCC added in a statement.<\/p>\n
“This situation, which results from large injections of liquidity in the market amid a contraction of the supply of(dollars) has led the Committee of Monetary Policy to take measures in order to contain the pressures on the market and thus reinforce macroeconomic stability,” it said.<\/p>\n
Michel Losembe, president of Congo’s banking association, told Reuters that the governor of the central bank, Deogratias Mutombo, told bankers at a meeting on Wednesday the central bank would sell $50 million this week at an inter-bank auction.<\/p>\n
The central bank had suspended the daily auctions last year because such a large gap had grown between the demand for dollars and francs, Losembe said.<\/p>\n
He added that the depreciation was not yet a major concern, but the government was eager to avoid a loss of buying power for average Congolese.<\/p>\n
Congo’s government is targeting 9 percent economic growth in 2016, though the International Monetary Fund expects 7.3 percent growth because of continuing weakness in commodities markets. (Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg, editing by Larry King)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Feb 25 Democratic Republic of Congo’s central bank plans to buy Congolese francs and increase the percentage of deposits banks must keep at the central bank, in an effort to prop up the national currency.} Congo’s exchange rate has remained steady and inflation last year was less than 1 percent, but falling oil and mineral […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[2482],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-23517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-reuters"],"bylines":[{"id":2482,"name":"REUTERS","slug":"reuters","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2482,"name":"REUTERS","slug":"reuters","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23517"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=23517"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=23517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}