The first woman to lead the BCC spent summer 2023 pulling every lever she holds.

By Kanisa Magazine · September 2023

Malangu Kabedi Mbuyi runs the instrument that sets the price of money in a dollarised economy, and in the summer of 2023 she used all of it at once. The Governor of the Banque Centrale du Congo took the policy rate from 9 per cent in March to 11 per cent in June and to 25 per cent on 8 August, introduced a reserve requirement on franc deposits and sold dollars to hold the currency, within a space of ten weeks.

For a business reader, her decisions matter more than any law passed in Kinshasa this year. The legal framework for banking and foreign exchange did not change; what changed was how hard the central bank enforced it and which levers it pulled. This profile looks at the person, the choices and what the BCC’s own statistics say about how they were executed.

From the Fund to the Boulevard Colonel Tshatshi

A career built on statistics and macroeconomic projection came to the BCC in June 2021.

The BCC’s own biography of its governor records a degree in economics and a master’s in econometrics. She spent more than three decades at the International Monetary Fund, working on statistical data, analysis and macroeconomic projection for African countries, and finished there as a mission chief running the Fund’s regional technical-assistance office for West Africa. Before that she was a senior executive at the Banque Centrale du Congo itself.

She was appointed by presidential decree on 30 June 2021, the first woman to lead the bank since it was established in 1961. The bank lists her priorities as internal governance, controlling inflation and the exchange rate, building reserves and keeping macroeconomic balance, with regional links to SADC and the West African monetary union. It is a technocrat’s brief, and the data show she began with a quiet currency.

Eighteen quiet months

The franc moved less than one per cent between the end of 2021 and the end of 2022.

The BCC’s indicative rate stood at 1,999.97 francs per dollar on 31 December 2021 and 2,016.57 on 30 December 2022, a move of 0.8 per cent. The monthly averages in the BCC’s tables hover between roughly 1,999 and 2,027 through 2022. The policy rate, according to the digest’s tables, was 7.5 per cent at the end of 2021 and 8.25 per cent a year later.

That stability was the Governor’s political capital. It meant that a minister, a mine manager and a market trader could price in francs for a season without checking the exchange rate. It also set the standard against which the next episode would be judged.

The summer of instruments

In ten weeks she moved the policy rate, the reserve requirement and the foreign-exchange desk.

The break came in spring. The BCC’s monthly average rate went from 2,071.57 in April to 2,286.56 in May, a rise of 10.4 per cent, and the franc ended May at 2,316.47. On 19 June the Monetary Policy Committee set a 10 per cent reserve requirement on franc deposits, up from nothing, and lifted the policy rate from 9 to 11 per cent, noting that the gap between the parallel and official rates had narrowed to 1.8 per cent from 5.9 per cent in December.

July brought a second spike. A commentary published in Deskeco says measures ordered on 17 July included BCC market sales of US$150 million on 20 July, fiscal consolidation and tighter currency repatriation. On 8 August, under her chairmanship, an extraordinary committee lifted the policy rate to 25 per cent, with the stated aim of neutralising excess liquidity and supporting macroeconomic stability.

Execution and its limits

Reserves paid for part of the calm, and a governor controls the price of francs, not the Treasury’s spending.

The digest of 27 September lets the execution be measured. The franc, which closed July at 2,427.85, ended August at 2,488.85 and averaged about 2,439 in the sixteen September sessions the digest records. The policy rate held at 25 per cent through 22 September, and the real policy rate, which the BCC calculates against annual inflation of 22.3 per cent, stood at 2.7 per cent, positive for the first time in the digest’s recent table.

Against that, reserves slipped from US$4,924 million on 31 August to US$4,536 million on 22 September. Banks’ excess balances at the BCC were CDF 622 billion, but the BCC’s own bill stock was CDF 120 billion on 20 September. The mop-up instrument is small next to the liquidity it is meant to drain, which is why the policy committee has leaned on the rate and the reserve requirement.

The commentary in Deskeco argues that weak coordination between the Treasury and the central bank let pressure build, and that the BCC absorbed only 14 per cent of excess liquidity through bonds in January. It reports security spending at 14 per cent of expenditure to May. On this reading, the Governor can choose the rate but not the deficit, and her decisions are reactive to fiscal events she does not control.

That is the structural fact about her job. Execution risk sits as much in the Treasury’s cash plan as in the committee room, and a credible profile has to say so.

What to read in her next move

Watch the rate, the reserve line and the bill stock; they will tell you the next decision before the communique does.

Three signals will indicate what she does next. First, the real policy rate: at 2.7 per cent it leaves little room to ease before inflation falls further. Second, the reserve line: a fall below roughly US$4.4 billion would make the foreign-exchange defence costly. Third, the bill stock: if it grows from CDF 120 billion toward the CDF 280 billion of March and June, the BCC is absorbing liquidity by market means rather than by decree.

A treasurer who watches those three lines weekly will see the decisions coming. The Governor’s record since 2021 is that she moves late, then moves hard, and the digests show it before the press does.