KINSHASA — DR
Congo has revived a long-standing dream of promoting the national currency and sidelining
the dollar to regain control over key economic levers.
اضافة اعلان
The Democratic Republic
of Congo's economy became informally "dollarized" several decades ago
under the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, whose chaotic rule bred four-digit
inflation.
Today, the Congolese
franc and the US dollar co-exist, but the greenback remains massively dominant.
The dollar is used in
major contracts, business transactions and the bank accounts of the
well-heeled, and even accepted by shopkeepers and in cash machines.
"The US dollar is
the common
currency, just as English is the common language," said a
vendor in "Le Chateau", the nickname for a small street in Kinshasa's
business district studded with the umbrellas of money-changers.
The use of the dollar
tamed hyperinflation, but also sapped the government's room to shape fiscal
policy and spending, which are the basic tools of economic management.
Foreign currencies are
believed to account for more than 90 percent of the money supply in this
sprawling country of more than 2.3 million square kilometers.
Presidential push
Now, the authorities
are once again mulling how to boost the standing of the Congolese franc,
although thinking is still at an early stage.
President Felix
Tshisekedi has called on the government to carry out "deep reflection on
making the Congolese franc a strong and stable currency", according to
minutes of a cabinet meeting on August 6.
Strengthening the franc
would improve the public's purchasing power and help to "accelerate the
de-dollarization process," the report said.
The way of achieving
this would be through "a series of measures aimed at using the Congolese
franc as the unit of account for all transactions," the report said.
Several attempts at
"de-dollarization" have been made before.
Measures forced through
at the end of the 1990s fell short because of a recession linked to war in the
east of the country and a flourishing black market in foreign exchange.
Conflict in the east,
pitting armed groups against each other and the army, persists to this day.
Another bid was
launched in 2012, when the government had high hopes for growth and new
high-denomination bills of Congolese francs.
But that too failed.
Almost 10 years later,
the government and the new head of the country's central bank, Malangu Kabedi-Mbuyi—
a former International Monetary Fund official (IMF) — are under orders to find
a new solution.
Words of caution
No details have been
released on how they plan to proceed, but advice and warnings are not lacking.
"Talk of the
de-dollarization of national life... should not be a slogan or a roll-call of
glib intentions," the daily Le Potentiel warned this week.
It urged the state
"to preach by example, through its various services, from the bottom to
the top."
Economist Michel Nsomue
said the government was hobbled by a fundamental problem.
"The international
financial institutions have been demanding a clampdown on inflation, and this
has been used as the pretext to restrict issuance of the Congolese franc,"
he said.
The result, he said,
has been to open the gates to a "massive and disorderly" influx of
foreign currency.
Such priorities were
wrong, he said.
In a country immensely
rich in minerals of all kinds, but where more than two-thirds of the 80 million
inhabitants live in poverty, "the fight against unemployment (and) the
development of resources" should take precedence over tackling rising
prices, he said.
"You don't import
development, you create it from within," said Nsomue.
The government has been
given some help with the latest inflation figures.
Monthly inflation at
the end of July was 0.42 percent, against 2.95 percent a year earlier.
And the
Congolese currency has recently enjoyed a very relative stability, of around
2,000 francs to the dollar.
But many Congolese are
skeptical.
They have known too much hardship and disappointment to believe that
the situation will change at the wave of some magic wand.
De-dollarize?
"What
rubbish!" said the money changer in "Le Chateau."
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