Banco de Moçambique’s August 2026 liquidity: MT 58.9bn of interbank repo, all at 9.25%

August 31, 2026

Wordless fine-line illustration: Two reservoirs on a hillside linked by a narrow pipe, one overflowing into a catch basin while the other runs low, with a valve held steady in the middle

Interbank repo volume nearly tripled in two months while the price of overnight money did not move.

Interbank repo trades in Mozambique added up to MT 58.9 billion in August 2026, against MT 35.7 billion in July and MT 20.0 billion in June, and every one of the 43 trades in the month was struck at 9.25%. That is our sum of the daily rows in the interbank operations series published by Banco de Moçambique (BdM). Volume nearly tripled in two months, and the price did not move by a single basis point.

For a treasurer, that pairing is the message of the month. BdM was not changing its policy stance through the rate. It was letting the quantity of short-term money, and who held it, do the adjusting.

A corridor that held its shape

Deposit at 6.25%, lend at 12.25%, and the market clears in the middle at the 9.25% MIMO rate.

The permanent deposit facility, where a bank leaves surplus balances with BdM overnight, pays 6.25%. The permanent lending facility, where a bank short of reserves borrows overnight, charges 12.25%, according to BdM’s money-market page. The 9.25% taxa MIMO sits halfway between the two, and August’s interbank repo and liquidity-swap trades all cleared there.

A bank that can lend to another bank at 9.25% will never leave money at 6.25%, and a bank that can borrow at 9.25% will never pay 12.25%. The facilities are a floor and a ceiling. They matter only when the interbank market fails to match a bank with surplus and a bank with a gap, which is exactly what the mid-August data show.

What the mid-month bulletins recorded

Banks were borrowing from BdM and depositing with BdM on the same days.

O Económico’s reading of the daily market bulletins for 14 to 20 August reports that use of the lending facility rose from MT 1.3 billion to MT 3.5 billion, while the deposit facility rose from MT 2.05 billion to MT 5.63 billion. The shortfall against mandatory reserves in meticais narrowed from MT 9.3 billion to MT 2.05 billion over the same days, and overnight interbank volume fell from MT 3 billion to MT 1.85 billion at an unchanged 9.25%.

That is a distribution problem, not a scarcity problem. Some banks ended the day long and parked cash at BdM at 6.25%; others ended short and paid 12.25% to cover reserves.

The series also shows where the volume went. Of the MT 58.9 billion of repo in August, one-day trades carried MT 45.1 billion, three-day weekend trades MT 9.5 billion and seven-day trades MT 4.3 billion. Short paper is doing the work. Liquidity swaps, the other interbank instrument, traded on only two days in August (3 and 4 August) for MT 700 million in total.

What the month cost in the bill market

The price of liquidity management showed up one step out on the curve, in Treasury bills.

BdM’s monthly averages for August put 91-day Treasury bills at 12.22% and 182-day bills at 12.27%. The gap to the 9.25% overnight rate is nearly three percentage points, and the gap between 91-day and 182-day bills is five basis points. A bank with idle cash faced a choice between 6.25% at BdM, 9.25% lent to a peer, or just above 12% in bills.

O Económico’s report on 14 to 20 August also states that 91-day bills absorbed about 85% of auction subscriptions in that window.

The foreign-exchange link

Dollar purchases by banks are the other side of the metical liquidity ledger.

Between January and August 2026, commercial banks bought US$5.73 billion from clients and sold US$5.65 billion, according to BdM data reported by AIM on 30 September, with purchases US$724 million above the same period of 2025. Governor Felisberto Navalha attributed the activity to the Rovuma LNG projects and extractive industry.

When a bank buys dollars from an exporter it pays out meticais, and that cash lands in the reserve-requirement account that BdM tracks. The foreign-exchange desk and the money-market desk are therefore one balance sheet seen from two sides.

What a treasurer does with this

Plan funding on the volume of the interbank market, not on the posted rate.

Companies that depend on overdrafts should ask their bank how it covered reserves in August: from peers at 9.25% or from the 12.25% window. Treasurers with idle meticais should price 91-day bills near 12.2% against term deposits and overnight placement, and read the facility balances in BdM’s daily bulletin before rolling.

The practical test for September is simple: if daily repo volume stays above MT 2 billion while overnight stays at 9.25%, liquidity remains plentiful in total and unevenly held. If the lending facility usage grows while repo volume falls, short banks are losing access to peers, and money-market costs are about to rise for borrowers.