Angola’s currency fell the most since September 2001 after the central bank allowed it to devalue as the drop in oil prices cut the main source of government revenue and export earnings.
The kwanza slid 15 percent to an all-time low, trading at 158.7370 against the dollar as of 12:35 p.m. in the capital, Luanda on Monday.
The drop followed a 24 percent retreat in 2015, its eighth year of declines and the most since 2003, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The kwanza was sold at an average rate of 156.386 last week compared with 135.988 a week earlier, the Luanda-based National Bank of Angola said on its website on Dec. 31.
That’s the biggest single devaluation since policy makers started cutting the currency’s exchange rate in several moves during the course of 2015, which Eurasia Group estimates amounted to 25 percent before the latest reduction.
Central bank Governor Jose Pedro de Morais is trying to reduce the gap between the kwanza’s official rate and that on the black market, where the currency was last year fetching between 270 and 280 per dollar.
A drop of more than 65 percent in the price of crude since June 2014 has curtailed the flow of dollars into the economy of sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest oil producer.
The central bank, known as the BNA, started managing foreign-exchange sales by commercial lenders to businesses in November as a response to the limited supplies of U.S. currency.
