Africa-Press – Mozambique. The governor of the Bank of Mozambique, Rogério Zandamela, said on Monday that African countries need to strengthen the payment system ‘to boost trade’ within the continent.
‘In the last ten years, intra-African trade has grown by 4%, representing only 14% of total African exports, compared to the untapped potential of 43% of intra-African exports, around $22 billion [ €20.2 billion],’ the governor said at the opening of the meeting of African central banks in Maputo.
In the same speech, he maintained that ‘it is of the utmost importance’ that the central banks continue to ‘work on regional payment systems to meet the challenges of intra-African trade and financial inclusion’.
‘To boost intra-African trade and continue to improve financial inclusion in Africa, we need an efficient and secure payment system,’ he said.
Maputo is hosting the Continental Seminar of the Association of African Central Banks (AACB), with the theme ‘Enhancing Payment Systems to Promote Financial Inclusion in Africa and Intra-African Trade: Challenges and Opportunities”’, bringing together 66 representatives from 23 African central banks and international institutions.
‘Despite the remarkable progress made in recent years, the African continent is still far from achieving the desirable levels of financial inclusion, since around half of our population is still excluded, which is almost twice the world average,’ recognised Zandamela.
‘On the other hand, progress in intra-African trade has been particularly slow,’ he also pointed out.
In this regard, the governor of the Mozambican central bank highlighted ‘the progress made within the framework of three regional payment and settlement platforms in the region’, such as the Southern African Development Community Real Time Gross Settlement System (SADC-RTGS), the East African Community Payment and Settlement System, and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Regional Payment and Settlement System.
‘In addition to creating various payment platforms, Africa needs integration and interoperability between the various systems so that they fulfil our purposes. To this end, we must continue to work towards the harmonisation of regulatory and supervisory frameworks and continue to monitor and mitigate the different risks, namely cybersecurity, money laundering and terrorist financing,’ he stressed.
He added that he expected the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System launched in Accra in 2022 under the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement to ‘promote intra-African trade and financial inclusion’.
‘The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System will enable payments in local currency between African countries, thus reducing dependence on foreign currency liquidity and transaction costs, in order to promote an increase in the volume of goods and services traded between African economies,’ he concluded.
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