Published in furtherafrica.com
The Angolan National Bank (BNA) has recently issued Notice no. 02/2020, changing the rules and procedures to follow when legal persons perform current invisibles exchange operations, revoking previous Notice no. 13/2013.
Said Notice applies to legal persons holding rights and obligations regarding those operations, as well as to financial institutions that intermediating such operations.
Current invisibles operations are deemed as current transactions that are not related with capital and goods, namely, in regards to current travels and transfers, payment and receipt of services and incomes, when performed between Angolan and foreign territory or between residents and non-residents, whose term is not superior to 360 days.
Operations foreseen in said Notice are waived of licensing, being solely submitted to validation, record and liquidation.
Financial banking institutions must register all the operations at the moment of execution or, when the operation arises from a contract, before its execution. Furthermore, the institutions shall have a technical file that resumes the contract’s terms, duly signed by an institution’s senior professional.
The liquidation of the operations foreseen in this Notice may be performed by bank transfer. When the operation is performed by an exchange resident, the beneficiary of the transfer must be the contract’s counterpart or the issuer of the invoice.
The exchange coverage to liquidate these operations is processed by the utilization of ordaining entity’s foreign currency own funds or the purchase of foreign exchange to financial banking institutions.
Current Invisibles payment operations by exchange residents
Before the execution or registration, financial banking institutions must do an assessment of each operation’s justification and legitimacy, based in the Client’s profile and supporting documents, through the validation of authenticity of those documents, the confirmation of relevant ministerial department authorization’s existence (if the operation demands it), evaluation of operation’s adequacy, considering Client’s business nature and dimension and the identification of money laundering a and terrorism financing situations.
If the evaluation is uncertain, financial banking institutions must abstain from executing the operation until adequate clarification from the ordaining entity.
Operations involving amounts higher than USD 25.000,00 must be supported by a contract. Transportation services to import goods and services with educational, scientific and cultural purposes do not need to be supported by contract.
Financial banking institutions must adopt proceedings that avoid the reusage and duplicity of effects of the same document. They should also maintain those documents archived.
The contract must clearly identify contracting parties, indicating their address, the object of the contract, rights and obligations, term and price. Contract’s vague scope, aleatory or indeterminate prices, clauses that establish automatic prorogation or damage public policies are not permitted.
Supporting contracts or invoices must be written in Portuguese, but can also be written in English or French if the financial banking institution has adequate capacity to interpret them.
Published by Luis Trigo Carrazedo