The authorisation granted to Pan-African financial group Ecobank Transnational Inc. to set up Ecobank Angola has been cancelled following its expiration, “due to the repeated non-compliance with the legal deadline for the start of activity,” the National Bank of Angola said last week.
The Angolan central bank also said that entities that have outstanding debts from Ecobank Angola have 30 days to notify the Department of Regulation and Organisation of the Financial System of the amounts in question.
The National Bank of Angola enforced the Basic Law of Financial Institutions, which establishes that the legal deadline for the start of the activity is 12 months after the license is granted, a period that can be extended once, for six months.
In Angola there are currently 28 banks in operation and two others, in the process of being set up, have not started operations, which are Banco de Activos e Créditos de Angola (BACA).
Thierry Tanoh, the CEO of Ecobank Transnational, a group based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and which has the most offices in African countries, announced in 2013 that it intended to move into Angola and Mozambique.
The aim, he said at the time, was to strengthen the network in Portuguese-speaking countries, but since then it has only moved into Mozambique, in addition to Cabo Verde (Cape Verde), Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe, among 35 African countries where it is already established.
Source: Macauhub
