The President of the Republic, Filipe Nyusi, reappointed on Wednesday the governor of the Bank of Mozambique, Rogério Zandamela, announced the presidency.

"In the use of the powers conferred on him [the President of the Republic], appointed through Presidential Order Rogério Lucas Zandamela to the position of Governor of the Bank of Mozambique," reads the statement released by the presidency, without further details.

It has been five years since Nyusi appointed Zandamela to the post, replacing Ernesto Gove, who ended his term on August 31, 2016 after ten years in the post.

Until then, Rogério Lucas Zandamela had been an employee of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since 1988, having served successively as the institution's resident representative in Brazil and as IMF mission chief for Armenia, Costa Rica, Gambia, Guatemala, Liberia, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, and Zimbabwe, in the Monetary and Capital Markets Department.

The now-renewed governor arrived at the central bank months after the state's hidden debt scandal erupted, now on trial, in an amount updated by the prosecution to $2.7 billion.

The Bank of Mozambique stepped in and contained the sharp slide of the metical that followed, while at the same time halting galloping inflation.

During Zandamela's first five years in office, other landmark moments included public intervention in Moza Banco as early as 2016, which has since been sold in 2018 to Kuhanha, the entity that manages the pension fund for central bank workers.

In late 2018, the governor faced a five-day 'blackout' of ATMs due to lack of payment to the network's computer management company and promoted the implementation of an alternative solution.

Already this year, the central bank intervened in June by suspending Standard Bank from the Interbank Foreign Exchange Market for a month after detecting "serious infractions" most notably fraudulent manipulation of the exchange rate.

Lusa Agency