The building that houses the central bank of Angola, the Banco Nacional de Angola (BNA), recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Since the magnificent Portuguese colonial style building, with its marbled halls and baroque-style dome, was officially opened by the then Portuguese president in 1956 it has borne witness to change on a scale that few could have dreamed of at the time.
First, in 1975, came the end of 500 years of continuous colonial occupation by the Portuguese. What followed was a gruesome and prolonged civil war that only ended in 2002. Since then, the challenges facing the BNA have been phenomenal. Along with the finance ministry, it has been charged with bringing down rampant inflation, which at one stage in the 1990s exceeded 3000%, and taking control of the country’s currency and exchange rate. For Amadeu de Jesus Castelhano Mauricio, governor of the BNA, the key to lowering inflation has been, and continues to be, fiscal and monetary discipline.
