Four years into her term, the BCC governor’s record is a policy rate that rose from 8 per cent to 25.

By Kanisa Magazine · June 2025

Malangu Kabedi Mbuyi has governed the Banque Centrale du Congo for almost four years, and the evidence of how she runs it is in a single table. The BCC’s weekly digest of 18 June shows the policy rate at 8.25 per cent at the end of 2022, at 25 per cent a year later, and at 25 per cent in every column since. The real rate, after inflation, moved from minus 4.85 per cent to plus 16.07 per cent.

That is a deliberate choice for a central bank in a dollarised economy where inflation reached 23.5 per cent at the end of 2023 on the BCC’s measure. It is also what makes the governor’s character a business variable. A governor who tolerates a negative real rate and a governor who holds a very positive one run different currencies, and importers, lenders and treasurers live with the difference.

From Kananga to the IMF

Thirty-two years at the Fund shaped a central banker who regards monetary rules as non-negotiable.

She was born in Kananga, in Kasaï-Central, on 1 February 1958, according to a profile published at her appointment on 6 July 2021. She holds a degree and a master’s in economics from the Free University of Brussels, worked a year at its applied-economics centre, and spent two years in the BCC’s studies department. Then she joined the IMF, where she spent 32 years as an economist, instructor and senior adviser, resident representative in Benin and Cameroon, and head of the Fund’s regional technical-assistance centre for West Africa.

President Félix Tshisekedi named her the thirteenth governor of the bank and the first woman to hold the post, succeeding Déogratias Mutombo. Her background matters for one reason: she knows from the inside what an IMF programme review demands of a central bank.

What she did with the rate

The policy rate went from 8.25 to 25 per cent, and she left it alone while prices fell.

Between the end of 2022 and the end of 2023 the rate moved from 8.25 per cent to 25 per cent, according to the BCC’s digest. It has not changed since. The Monetary Policy Committee she chairs held it at 25 per cent on 15 April 2025 and again at the sitting reported on 1 February, leaving banks’ required reserves unchanged: 12 per cent of franc sight deposits and 13 per cent of dollar sight deposits.

The results are public. Annual inflation was 10.1 per cent in March, against 21.5 per cent a year earlier, according to the committee, and the BCC’s table puts it at 8.93 per cent by mid-June. The franc lost 0.6 per cent in the first quarter against 4.1 per cent in the same period of 2024. For the whole of 2024 the committee reported a depreciation of 6.2 per cent, after 22.4 per cent in 2023, and growth of about 6 per cent. By 13 June the indicative rate was CDF 2,868.22, only 0.05 per cent weaker than at the end of 2024.

The machinery behind the headline

Bill auctions, not announcements, do the daily work of draining francs.

The rate is enforced through BCC bills. The stock rose from CDF 208 billion at the end of 2022 to CDF 1,354 billion on 11 June 2025, and the weighted yield sits within a point or so of the policy rate, 23.89 per cent at seven days and 24.65 per cent at 28 days. Each Wednesday the bank announces a range, banks bid, and the difference drains francs from the system. On 11 June banks bid CDF 725 billion against a range of CDF 1,250 billion.

The tool is not free. The BCC’s table puts the cumulative interest cost of the bills at CDF 112 billion by 11 June, against CDF 73 billion for the whole of 2024, and the bank carries that cost on its own balance sheet. The committee credits the results to rigorous liquidity management and closer coordination between fiscal and monetary policy. That coordination is the part outsiders cannot see, and the part a future governor can change.

What the IMF programme adds

A US$1.7 billion arrangement turns her discipline into an external commitment.

In January the IMF Board approved a 38-month Extended Credit Facility of US$1,729 million, together with a US$1,038 million Resilience and Sustainability Facility. Net reserves in the BCC’s table were US$6,741 million on 13 June, up from US$6,132 million at the end of 2024, and equal to eleven weeks of imports.

A governor with the Fund’s training is credible with the programme’s reviewers, and the programme in turn gives her cover with a government that faces heavy security spending in the east. The arrangement does not make the policy permanent. It makes departure from it visible, because every review compares the bank’s actions with the commitments it signed. For a business, that is the practical meaning of a governor’s credibility: it is borrowed from a programme that outlasts any single committee meeting, and it is the reason the rate has been left alone while inflation fell.

What a business should do with her record

Plan around the rate, the reserve target and the governor’s calendar.

Treasurers should assume the policy rate stays high until the committee says otherwise, and price franc borrowing and franc deposits accordingly. In the digest’s mid-June table a franc deposit pays 8.33 per cent on average and a franc loan costs 29.55 per cent effective, which are two ends of the same decision to keep money tight.

Importers can rely on the franc’s stability for pricing. The risk to that assumption is political rather than economic, because a central bank run by one person’s discipline depends on how long she serves. Lenders should also keep a franc-liquidity line separate from their dollar book, because the weekly auctions can move bank cash by hundreds of billions of francs, as the 28 May to 11 June columns show. The next dated test is the committee’s July sitting, where the question will be whether the rate holds with inflation already in single digits on the BCC table.