Africa-Press – Angola. The main consequence is a 660 million dollar drop in international reserves, which the IMF says should be managed prudently. The 2025 State Budget Law allows the government to reimburse the central bank within a timeframe that violates the BNA law.
The National Bank of Angola (BNA) has already lent almost 1.3 trillion Kz to the Government, equivalent to approximately 1.4 billion USD, according to the central bank’s monetary and financial statistics for the month of July.
The consequence of these loans is a USD 660 million drop in the foreign currency reserves managed by the BNA, Expansão has found, as this is where part of the money lent to the government has come from. In December 2024, these reserves were equivalent to USD 15.768 billion, and at the end of July, they were USD 15.107 billion.
However, this will only represent a portion of the loans the central bank will make to the government this year, as the 2025 State Budget Law stipulates that the central bank will lend up to USD 2 billion to the Treasury.
The BNA law allows the central bank to lend money to the State as long as it does not exceed the equivalent of 10% of the tax revenues of the previous General State Budget, a debt that must then be paid off by the end of the year in which the loan was granted, and paid in cash.
And that’s what’s been happening over the years. Just days before the end of 2024, the government paid off a debt of nearly 1.4 trillion kwanzas to avoid violating BNA law, and the same thing happened in 2023, when it paid off a debt of 229.2 billion kwanzas.
For this year, the central bank’s loans to the State are shrouded in controversy, since the Government, in the 2025 State Budget law, approved in the National Assembly, grants authorization to the BNA to receive a portfolio of securities issued by the Ministry of Finance, which is a loan to the State, the repayment of which must “occur within a five-year period”, a period that, if implemented, will violate the Central Bank Law that requires loans to the State to be repaid by December 31 of the year in which they are granted.
Experts consulted by Expansão in December warned that this authorization granted by the deputies also compromises the constitutionally enshrined independence of the central bank, as it appears to be an “order” from above.
This BNA financing operation for the State was already foreseen in the 2025 State Budget proposal, but underwent changes in the document approved by Parliament. Initially, it was written that “the President of the Republic, as Head of the Executive Branch, is authorized to issue a portfolio of foreign currency securities, up to a limit of two billion dollars with a minimum maturity of five years, in favor of the BNA under terms and conditions to be agreed upon, in accordance with paragraph 3 of Article 5 (Financing).”
However, the document that was subsequently approved meant that the President was no longer the one violating the BNA law, shifting the burden to the deputies, as it grants the BNA “authorization to receive a portfolio of securities, issued by the ministerial department responsible for Public Finances, in exchange for the credit granted to the State.”
After several experts internally warned of the violation of BNA law through this operation, the IMF also came out to say that the Government should avoid it, according to the latest report on regular visits to member countries under the institution’s Article IV.
“The authorities must comply with the current BNA law and refrain from extending the maturity of BNA loans to mitigate risks to the central bank’s independence and help safeguard international reserves,” the multilateral institution said, adding that this authorization should be “removed from the next 2026 budget.”
The Fund added that compliance with the BNA law “is crucial to mitigate the risks to international reserves arising from foreign exchange loans to the Government” and warns that this type of exceptional financing must be made in “compliance with established and predictable rules.”
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