Good afternoon. The Bank of Mozambique this week announced its latest measure to try to deal with the shortage of foreign currency, especially US dollars, which makes it hard for businesses to import goods and to take their revenues out of the country. A recent symptom of this was when the airline Emirates announced in October that it would no longer sell plane tickets through travel agencies in Mozambique.
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The central bank announced on Wednesday that it was imposing a spending cap of $93,900 per person for foreign currency payments and cash withdrawals made with Mozambican debit and credit cards. Why? Because businesses trying to get around the foreign currency shortage have been resorting to using their credit cards to pay for imports, and making withdrawals from cash machines abroad. That has resulted in Mozambican banks having to find increasing amounts of US dollars to settle their accounts with card services companies like Visa, and those banks have complained to the central bank, hence the restriction.
