In recent months,&nbsp;various debates&nbsp;about the South African Reserve Bank have focused broadly on three aspects – its shareholding, its mandate and its independence.



The three debates are somewhat convoluted. They are indeed three different issues, but they are interlinked.



Let’s turn to the issue of ownership first.



The South African Reserve Bank is one of&nbsp;only eight central banks&nbsp;in the world with private shareholders. The others are in Belgium, Greece, Italy, Japan, San Marino, Switzerland and Turkey.



The debate about shareholding in South Africa’s Reserve Bank centres around the issue of&nbsp;nationalisation. Some political players, such as the third largest party – the Economic Freedom Fighters – are&nbsp;calling&nbsp;for the ownership of the Bank to be transferred from current private shareholders to the South African government and has tabled a bill in Parliament to achieve this objective.



The issue is very charged. But it’s also confused and not very well understood. There’s an assumption that a change of ownership would automatically mean a change in the role the Bank plays. This isn’t the case because in fact the Bank’s shareholders play no role in its mandate. In that sense it doesn’t matter who the shareholders are. Because they can’t affect its mandate, nationalisation&nbsp;won’t affect&nbsp;the independence of the central bank.



But there are other ways in which the Bank’s ability to do its job can be undermined. This is where the Bank’s&nbsp;primary mandate&nbsp;comes in.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The mandate issue</h2>



The mandate of South Africa’s central bank is set out in the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996">Constitution</a>, which says:



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">The primary objective of the Bank shall be to protect the value of the currency of the Republic of South Africa in the interest of balanced and sustainable economic growth in the Republic.</blockquote>



The Bank also adheres to an inflation target which was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.resbank.co.za/MonetaryPolicy/DecisionMaking/Pages/default.aspx">put in place</a>&nbsp;in 2000. This requires it to keep inflation within a band of 3% to 6%. The Bank uses monetary policy and interest rate decisions to achieve this objective. In short, when the inflationary trend declines, the interest rate declines and when the inflationary trend increases, the interest rate increases.



The issue of the Bank’s focus on keeping inflation within this band – and the fact that its mandate sets out clearly that managing inflation is it’s core job – is hotly contested.



Those on the left of the political spectrum, including the country’s largest trade union federation,&nbsp;argue&nbsp;that the South African Reserve Bank shouldn’t focus primarily on inflation. Instead, they say, it should also be taking account of economic growth as well as the employment rate in the country.



The Bank’s response has been that its current mandate is broad enough because it says quite clearly that, while managing inflation, it must do so “in the interest of balanced and sustainable economic growth in the Republic”.



For those like myself who oppose a broader mandate, the issue is quite simple: giving the Bank a broader mandate raises the danger that the Bank will take its eye off inflation because it’s having to concentrate on other issues. This, in turn, could lead to rampant inflation.



The Bank’s mandate is crucial in another respect. The SA Reserve Bank’s ability to pursue its mandate without interference from government is how its independence is measured.



South Africa’s central bank has acted on the whim of politicians before. It didn’t end well.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How political interference can hurt</h2>



In the 1980s inflation rose dramatically, resulting in the country suffering its&nbsp;highest inflation&nbsp;rates ever: on average about 15% per year for the decade.



Despite the fact that rising prices called for the Bank to act by raising interest rates, it failed to do so on instructions of the government. Inflation wreaked havoc on the earnings of ordinary South Africans, as well as on the value of people’s pensions.



The government’s interference was dramatically brought to light ahead of a by-election in 1984 in a Johannesburg suburb called Primrose. Just prior to the by-election the government instructed the South African Reserve Bank to drop the interest rate. This subsequently became known as the&nbsp;Primrose Prime incident.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Where the focus should be</h2>



The debates swirling around the central bank have&nbsp;created uncertainty. This is despite&nbsp;reassurances&nbsp;from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.



The President needs to do more: he also needs to establish certainty about the executive management of the South African Reserve Bank.



An executive vacancy at the central bank, created by the&nbsp;resignation&nbsp;of one of the Deputy Governors, Francois Groepe, must be filled as a matter of urgency. And the President should make clear his intention to reappoint the Governor, Lesetja Kganyago, and the Deputy Governor, Daniel Mminele, whose terms expire this year.



These appointments are under the purview of the President. The SA Reserve Bank Act&nbsp;stipulates&nbsp;that the President must fill executive positions after consultation with the Minister of Finance and the Bank’s board.



South Africa needs stability at the central bank to ensure a growth trajectory for the country. The President should get the process of filling the vacancy and providing certainty about the future of Kganyago and Mminele underway sooner rather than later. -The Conversation



-Jannie Rossouw: Head of School of Economic &amp; Business Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand



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South African Reserve Bank Rate Announcement Ahead Of Stimulus Plan

Explainer: South Africa’s Central Bank – Ownership, Mandate and Independence

Nigeria is heavily dependent on the oil sector as a major revenue source. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has oversight of the country’s petroleum trade and keeps records on domestic crude oil sales and reconciliation statement with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The NNPC is widely considered as one of the most powerful corporation’s in Nigeria, so when in 2013, one of Nigeria’s most respected central bank governors, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, told a senate committee that $49 billion was missing from the state coffers, all hell broke loose.
“I had for many years expressed concerns that reserves are not going up but it never really hit me. I always thought there was some explanation of maybe the production sharing contracts were not favorable to Nigeria, the oil company was taking the bulk of the revenue, maybe we had some sort of financing arrangement with the oil companies and the revenues were going towards paying those debts, maybe NNPC had borrowed from banks and the revenue was going towards paying off the banks,” says Sanusi, who now goes by the name of Emir Muhammadu Sanusi after being crowned as the Emir of Kano in 2014.
The shocking revelation will forever haunt Sanusi as his worst day in business. It all began in a quarterly meeting at the CBN.
“We have within the central bank what’s called the Government Consultative Committee and it is made up of all the departmental directors, the deputy governors and the governor. We met once in a quarter to review the economy. At several of these meetings I had complained that I was not at all satisfied that we had understood what was going on with revenues because the numbers were not adding up to me,” says Sanusi.
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“So the initial report I got was that we had been seeing a huge and increasing gap between the value of crude oil shipped from Nigeria and the amount of money paid in by NNPC. So I said ‘why don’t you go back to just January last year ‘til now and bring out from your records how much crude we exported and how much revenue we got in’. He came back with numbers that showed a difference of $49 billion and I said ‘I don’t believe this’. So I got his deputy governor and other directors to look at the numbers again and they came back with the same number.”
After reconciliation, $29 billion was explained through a production sharing agreement where the money was paid to the state through the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) account instead of the CBN account. The remaining $20 billion however could not be accounted for. Sanusi had to make the difficult decision either to keep quiet and finish the remainder of his term as governor of the CBN or speak up. He decided to speak up.
“I thought the best thing to do was to write to the president and draw his attention to this and the reason is because, as governor of the central bank, I have the fiduciary responsibility to my customer to let them know if something is going wrong. So I wrote to the president and said to him ‘Mr President, I am concerned that reserves are not going up’ and explained to him what was happening. This was in August 2013; the president received the letter and did nothing. I saw him several times in meetings after that but he said nothing,” says Sanusi.
After being ignored for months, Sanusi’s letter mysteriously ended up in the hands of the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, who wrote an open letter to the Goodluck Jonathan administration. The media frenzy that ensued resulted in Sanusi being summoned to the president’s office.
“I got a call and he said I should see him at 3PM and when I got there the place had been swept, there was no one apart from the security services, it was as if everybody had been asked to go. He says to me he is calling because he is surprised a letter I wrote to him got to Obasanjo and I said to him I was surprised as well. And he said he is calling me because he thinks I know who gave Obasanjo the letter. I said the letter was in different places, and Obasanjo had been a former president and lived in this villa for eight years and therefore he is more likely to have sources inside this villa than inside the CBN,” says Sanusi.
“He said he is convinced that the letter left the CBN to Obasanjo and I have 24 hours to find out who leaked the letter or sack somebody, and if I didn’t sack them then that was proof that I leaked the letter and that I should resign.”
The exchange was unexpected for Sanusi. The focus was not on the missing $20 billion but rather on who leaked the allegations to the former president. Sanusi redirected the focus of the conversation back to the missing funds and put the blame on the NNPC and the former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke. From that moment, he knew he had signed his professional death warrant.
“I knew that taking on the NNPC was taking on the most powerful minister in Jonathan’s government and nobody who had touched Diezani had survived; so it was not a question of what would happen, I just didn’t care at that time. I did not want to go down in history as having seen this and kept quiet. Once I mentioned the minister he got very angry, his countenance changed and he said ‘you know, whether you like it or not, you are going to leave that office, I cannot continue to work with you, either you or I will leave government’.”
The following months were full of threats and allegations of corruption against Sanusi, which led to his eventual suspension by Jonathan on the grounds of financial recklessness and misconduct. His term as the governor of the CBN had come to an end just a couple of months before the end of his official tenure. The authorities seized his passports and made life uncomfortable, according to Sanusi.
“I always said that I didn’t see the role of being Governor of the Central Bank as an end; it was never really an ambition for me. It was a job and, if I wasn’t sacked, my term would end anyway. The only reason I stayed is because I believed if you are called to serve your country, don’t just walk away. You have a five-year term, complete the term and go. So it wasn’t an issue, the real issue for me was to get to the bottom of what had gone wrong,” says Sanusi.
These days, Sanusi still spends his time in service to his country but this time as Emir Sanusi, and the religious leader of the Kano Emirate. The role is a hereditary role and has been in existence for thousands of years, with his particular dynasty ruling Kano for over 200 years. The role has tremendous influence in terms of advice to political authorities and collaboration in the delivery of public services. As he looks back on the events that transpired just a few years ago, his resolve is as strong as ever when asked if he would have done anything differently.
“I am a prince and you need to understand the psychology of princes. The best place for a prince to be is a place where he can be a hero; at that point we had reached a point where I could not lose. If the president brought me down, I would be brought down while defending $20 billion of the Nigerian people’s money and if I brought the president down I am a hero for bringing the president down while defending $20 billion of the Nigerian people’s money, I could not lose. The only way the president was going to win was to sack his petroleum minister and investigate the money.”

The Pain Of The Banker Who Investigated The  Missing  $20 Billion

The ignominious ousting of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, arguably Nigeria&#8217;s most recognisable Central Bank governor in history, heralded a tidal wave of public opinion and sent shockwaves throughout financial markets.
Following allegations of financial misconduct in the bank’s 2012 annual report, Sanusi was questioned by Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan in May and suspended in February while on assignment in Niger. The timing has led some to conclude that it is a consequence of the embarrassment he caused the government by questioning the country’s national oil company over $20 billion that was missing from the national account.
The action caused debate over whether the president acted legally since the constitutional provision for removal of the Central Bank governor states it must be approved by a two-third majority in the senate. In the aftermath, the naira recorded a significant loss in value, trading at N169 to $1 from a previous day closing price of $163. This was described by Proshare, a market intelligence firm, as the worst single day drop in 15 years.
Sanusi was a symbol of Nigeria&#8217;s economic stability because of his prudent monetary policy regime. His achievements included reducing inflation of over 11% in 2009, when he assumed office, to single digit rates, as well as maintaining exchange rate stability which saw the naira strengthening against the dollar over the past 24 months. The overall performance of the system under his watch fueled confidence in Nigeria&#8217;s economy and led to heightened interest in the country’s bonds and investments.
Predictably, his abrupt removal was met by a panicked response from investors. The government moved quickly to reassure stakeholders, with finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala emphasizing that the prudent fiscal and monetary policies that had been pursued up till now, will be maintained.
While the minister’s assertion and a similar statement by the interim head of the bank, Sarah Alade, provided some calm, the system will continue to be characterized by uncertainty until at least several months into the tenure of the incoming helmsman, Godwin Emefiele, the CEO of Zenith Bank, one of Nigeria’s largest lenders.
Emefiele, a former university lecturer, is a veteran of the banking sector having been on the management team of Zenith since it was founded in the early 1990s. While his nomination is surprising, he is viewed favorably by industry observers due to his reputation as a steady hand.
In light of these events, Nigeria’s monetary policy authorities are faced with the formidable challenge of facilitating a stable environment that will enable continued growth of the economy. At the previous meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the bank’s policy making authority, key issues were identified which pose a challenge to monetary stability in the near to medium term. These include the depletion of the country’s reserves, dwindling flows of foreign investment, the widening gap between the official exchange rate and that of authorized dealers, and the upward tendency of inflation.
These will persist in the coming months as the country prepares for national elections next year. Investors are likely to tread cautiously as the outlook evolves, hence authorities may resort to implementing extraordinary measures based on coordinated fiscal and monetary policy actions, in order to stem volatility. However, the recent high growth potential classification of Nigeria as part of the MINT countries, along with Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey, means overall interest in Africa’s largest economy in waiting is unlikely to wane.
Meanwhile, Emefiele will assume office as the 11th governor of the Central Bank. With a calm disposition that is the antithesis of Sanusi’s vibrant personality, he is viewed as having a temperament that is more suited to the role. Highly regarded by colleagues and observers, he will need to leverage his considerable experience to build on the achievements of the bank’s previous leadership, as he steers it through a period of uncertainty.
The manner of Sanusi’s removal has raised old questions about the independence of the Central Bank governor in a country where political leaders wield considerable influence. While he has confirmed that he will not go back to the job, Sanusi intends to challenge his removal in court in order to clarify the legality of the president’s action for the benefit of his successors.

Stormy Days Ahead?

“My name is Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, not Central Bank Governor. I enjoy my job but if you want me to quit, I will honorably quit.”
Those were the words of the Central Bank governor to a Nigerian Senate Committee in 2010. He was summoned to defend himself after attacking Parliament for consuming, in salaries and allowances, a quarter of what the Federal budget allocates to overhead costs.
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Back then, he didn’t have to quit. In February, almost four years later, a statement from the office of President Goodluck Jonathan announced his suspension on account of far-reaching irregularities. The following day, a 13-page investigative report, dated June 2013, surfaced online. It was produced by the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, an obscure government agency. The damning report appears to contain the evidence hinted at as Sanusi’s suspension was announced.
In the months before his suspension, it became public knowledge that Sanusi had fallen out with Jonathan after the leak of a letter he addressed to the president alleging that tens of billions of dollars of oil revenue was unaccounted for. It was reported that Jonathan was deeply embarrassed by this. Sanusi confirmed that the president asked him to resign for the leak. He refused.
Sanusi was appointed to the office in June 2009, five months after he was named CEO of First Bank of Nigeria, the country’s largest bank by assets. It was a critical time in the banking industry. The shock from the global economic meltdown was still reverberating across Nigeria. The stock market had crashed and there were rumors that many banks were only alive because the Central Bank was propping them up with cash.
One of the first things he did as governor was to carry out an audit of Nigeria’s 24 banks. Within his first four months, he sacked eight bank CEOs for malfeasance and poured nearly $4 billion worth of bailouts into the banks they ran. In boldness and scope it was the most momentous thing in Nigerian banking’s recent history. That action sealed Sanusi’s reputation as a no-nonsense banker. Most of what he did afterwards was viewed in that light. It was therefore not much of a surprise when he took on the powerful National Assembly a year later.
Under him, the Central Bank was widely respected. In January 2013, inflation fell to 9%  and stayed in single digits until the news of Sanusi’s suspension broke. He was fiercely committed to the stability of the naira; regularly tinkering—with mixed success—with forex regulations to keep the exchange rate stable.
Time had him on its Most Influential Persons list in 2011. In his final months, foreign investors expressed concerns about the future of the Nigerian economy post-Sanusi.
He was born into aristocracy. His grandfather was an Emir of Kano, one of Nigeria’s oldest kingdoms; his father a foreign service bureaucrat who went on to become Nigeria’s ambassador to China in the 1970s.
“He adored Chairman Mao Zedong’s China, which for him was one in which the black African—seen everywhere else at the time as inferior—was worthy of respect,” Sanusi wrote in the Financial Times.
It would have been easy to conclude that Sanusi shared his father’s adoration for all things Chinese, especially when he announced, in 2011, that Nigeria was going to take the unprecedented step of diversifying some of its external reserves into Renminbi. But the central thesis of that piece was that Africa must recognize that China is in Africa not for African interests but its own.
For a central banker he was extremely outspoken.
He had always been that way. In the 2000s, he regularly wrote and published in newspapers and online forums ardent opinion pieces touching on some of Nigeria’s most contentious issues: politics, religion and ethnicity.
He was a polygamous Muslim prince—with a degree in Sharia and Islamic Studies from the International University of Africa in Sudan, earned several years after his Master’s degree in economics—who boldly championed women’s rights. In April last year, he disclosed that the Central Bank had mandated Nigeria’s banks to reserve more board and management positions for women.
Last year, he announced that he had no plans to run for a second term. By Nigerian standards it was another unusual move; public officials never turn down the opportunity of a second term. But it may simply have been that the hard-nosed Sanusi had realized that he didn’t stand a chance.
In the end, it was a terse statement that ended his time at the Central Bank. For someone who made his name as an insider critical of what he saw as the government’s penchant for undisciplined public spending, it was ironic that the millstone that pulled him down came labeled with the same failings. For now, however, no one knows how true those allegations are.
In his appraisal of his final moments, Sanusi was as clear-eyed as he was when he inherited a deeply dysfunctional banking system.
“This is about consequences for decisions I have taken. This is something that is long overdue. I am surprised it took them so long.”

‘I Am Surprised That   It Took Them So Long’

Professor Njuguna Ndung’u, the governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, and one of the country’s most influential men in economic matters, is not known for being talkative. Partly because of his reticence, the few public remarks he makes are studied carefully.
These days, however, Ndung’u is displaying a wholly different side, allowing himself to be caught up in spectacular public squabbles with politicians over deteriorating economic indicators reflected in high inflation, a weak Kenyan shilling and rising interest rates.
“Policy making is very challenging,” he says. “You have to understand what  the right policy is and understand which tools to use.”
Booking an appointment was a lot easier than actually sitting down with the governor on the day. He postponed twice—from 10am to noon, and then to 3:30pm—so he could attend a grilling from the parliamentary committee on the controversial award of a currency printing tender to De La Rue of France. You would think that facing unforgiving legislators in an unforgiving part of the world would be about the worst thing for a banking regulator who is used to dealing with polished economists and bankers.
“There are no worse days for me,” he says calmly, as he sinks into his black leather seat which squelches in protest.
“I work day and night. There’s no worst day or best day. Today it could be inflation; tomorrow a parliamentary committee wants certain statistics; and so on,” he says.
But looking back, it is obvious that as far as bad days go, some are worse than others. In 2009, the global financial crisis started trickling down to Africa, especially in countries connected to the west like Kenya and South Africa.
Even worse, the financial melt-down—which began in the US with the collapse of the mortgage market—came to Kenya when the country had barely recovered from the violent two-month political crisis of January and February 2008 which had not only scared away foreign investors, but also slowed economic growth and production.
“That recovery was painful. It was painful because 2008 was a difficult year, and 2009 was devastating because by the time we were dealing with the post-election aftermath, the economic crisis hit us,” he says.
When there’s a crisis in Europe or the US, skittish investors fear it will spread to developing countries. In 2009, Ndung’u, who is an associate professor of economics at the University of Nairobi and holds a PhD in economics from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, was a worried man.
“We tried to understand our
internal crisis, but with the global financial crisis, you were waiting every day, waiting for something to happen.”
For a man who implements quick yet well-thought out actions, the waiting game was unbearable.
It was just past 5pm on a cold Friday in August in 2009. In a dimly lit office at the Central Bank headquarters in Nairobi, Ndung’u, an economics author and a fan of Shakespeare, stared blankly at the markets trading board, his lower lip trembling at the gravity of what he was witnessing. This was tragedy worthy of Macbeth.
What was happening was crazier than anything he could have imagined. Global stock markets were swooning, currencies were being crushed and financial systems across the world were punch-drunk.
From his third floor office, looking out at the skyline of East Africa’s strongest economy, Ndung’u’s well-tuned economic antennae began picking up danger signals. Too late for him; Kenya’s financial system and stock market were already in panic, and the numbers were not looking pretty.
“There was not much we could do. It was the public panic that we were waiting to contain,” he says.
That day, when the global financial crisis hit and he could do nothing about it, was his worst day.
Helpless, he could merely watch as it triggered events that would challenge his reputation as Central Bank governor and plunge Kenya’s economy towards recession. The economy grew by 2.6% that year, compared to 7.1% in 2007. It was all work and no play for the professor.
“We were looking at all avenues to manage it. The other crises we knew [about] were speculative attacks from Europe. But now we were, day and night, looking at what we could do without contradicting domestic policy. Because we had signed Article 4 with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and so we could not restrict forex controls like South Africa and Tanzania.”
This meant that the humble Kenyan shilling was left to the mercy of the crisis. It was pummelled daily as investors dumped it and scampered for safety to international currencies like the dollar.
This was not good for Kenya, as it further squeezed an economy emerging from intensive care.
This is the man named after a leprosy outbreak, that hit Kenya in the fifties, who takes struggle in his stride. With a smile, he remembers the famine of the 1960s, when the country was forced to eat maize, and the multiple political economic crises of the 1980s.
“Crises will always come and go. Any crisis is a lesson and any challenge must be surmounted,” he says.
Ndung’u is a tall, tireless 60-something with an angular face, a modest voice and a smile that rearranges everything on his face, ending with deep dimples on either cheek. Armed with years of experience in theoretical economics, teaching at the university and working for a number of organisations, he intended to beat the global financial crisis.
No longer would the Central Bank of Kenya sit and wait for an onslaught by the big boys, he resolved. But like many central bankers across the world, Ndung’u was merely chasing shadows.
“Even America didn’t understand until Lehman Brothers collapsed and that’s when we started mapping out who was trading with Lehman and who was holding the toxic assets.”
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a global financial services firm and the fourth largest investment bank in the USA after Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. It conducted business in investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales and trading, investment management, private equity and private banking.
On September 15, 2008, the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following the massive exodus of most of its clients, drastic losses in its stock, and devaluation of its assets by credit rating agencies. This is believed to have played a major role in sparking the global financial crisis.
The domino effect spread through the global financial system, and fuelled capital flight from markets thought to have been overly exposed to the so-called toxic assets.
“The beauty of it is that we have a strong financial industry in Kenya. And it has developed. Only we don’t have faith in it; but in CBK we have faith.”
Ndung’u says his academic background combined with his years of experience gave him the upper hand in managing the crisis. He used all the monetary tools at his disposal, such as interest rates to reduce the cash supply in the economy and increased vigilance on banks and other financial institutions, to ensure they were operating within the required liquidity levels.
In spite of the best that his arsenal could muster, the impact of the financial crisis – which is still being felt in certain quarters, especially through inflationary pressures and currency swings—saw the governor being voted as worst performer in Africa by Reuters in 2011. He takes the dubious honor in his stride.
“I don’t fear being rated; it makes you think fast. If you ask them to give you the previous ratings of governors, they won’t show them to you. Rating is a family of indicators and having to control inflation is a weak way of rating. If there’s a shortage of maize and there’s a rise in prices, you cannot say you are going to rate the governor on that. People will laugh at you. But I don’t fight with the media. That’s their business.”
With a demanding job that requires a stiff upper lip, the governor says he unwinds by playing golf on Sundays. But even his madness has a method, and the reason he enjoys golf, he admits, is because ultimately it is about strategy.
“Golf is about the brain: you have to be relaxed in mind and you have to have a strategy. I used to play lawn tennis until I realized I was growing old and my legs were wobbling,” he says.
But it is his football stint during his school days that he talks passionately about.
“My advantage was that I could dodge with the left or right leg and I would use both legs for scoring as well. That’s why you can see my hands are injured and not my legs,” he says, exposing three scars on his left arm from his footballing days. His ambidexterity and the game’s ability to stimulate intelligence, vision and strategy stood him in good stead both on the football field and in the wood-panelled offices of the Central Bank.
A nation passionate about football could not wish for a better captain guiding their economic future.
“Soccer requires intelligence, good vision and strategy. And all these qualities are applied in managing the economy,” he says.
Except when a striker, in the shape of a world financial crisis, is tearing your defense apart.

Tag: Central Bank

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Explainer: South Africa’s Central Bank – Ownership, Mandate and Independence

The Pain Of The Banker Who Investigated The Missing $20 Billion

Stormy Days Ahead?

‘I Am Surprised That It Took Them So Long’

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