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Ivory Coast
Index
Côte d'Ivoire's banking system developed during the
colonial
period as an extension of the French financial and banking
systems.
In 1962 Côte d'Ivoire, along with seven other francophone
nations,
became a member of the West African Monetary Union (Union
Monétaire
Ouest Africain--UMOA). The UMOA established the Central
Bank of
West African States (Banque Centrale des Etats de
l'Afrique de
l'Ouest--BCEAO), which issued the African Financial
Community
(Communauté Financière Africaine) franc (CFA F), the unit
of
currency for the member states, and established policies
governing
interest rates. Also in 1962, France and the members of
the UMOA
signed an agreement that guaranteed the convertibility of
the CFA
F to French francs and established operations accounts for
each
country with the French treasury in order to centralize
their
reserves. The signatories also agreed to the free
circulation of
capital within the union. Since 1962 the UMOA has modified
its
system gradually to grant greater monetary autonomy to the
African
member states. For example, the UMOA reduced the share of
French
votes on the board of directors from one-third to
one-seventh,
transferred the headquarters of the BCEAO from Paris to
Dakar,
Senegal, and in 1975 introduced changes to increase the
managerial
presence of Africans in their national economies and to
help the
member states make better use of their resources.
Domestically, Côte d'Ivoire had the second most
sophisticated
banking system in sub-Saharan Africa, after South Africa.
In 1988
it had twenty-one credit and loan banks (including fifteen
commercial banks and six specialized credit banks), nine
foreign
bank offices with limited activity, sixteen registered
credit or
leasing institutions, and seven organization similar to
credit
unions. More than half of bank ownership remained in
foreign
control: six of the fifteen commercial banks were branches
of
foreign banks (including three American institutions). Of
the
fifteen banks with some domestic ownership, Ivoirians
(publicly or
privately) owned no more than 48.4 percent.
In the late 1980s, the banking system was especially
hard hit
by the fall in cocoa earnings and the subsequent liquidity
crisis.
In 1987 the Ivoirian Bank for Construction and Public
Works (Banque
Ivoirienne de Construction et de Travaux Publics--BICT)
and the
National Savings and Loan Bank (Banque Nationale d'Epargne
et
Credit--BNEC) were closed by authorities. In early 1988,
the
National Agricultural Development Bank (Banque Nationale
pour le
Développement Agricole--BNDA), which provided credit to
peasant
farmers, and the Côte d'Ivoire Credit Bank (Crédit de la
Côte
d'Ivoire--CCI), an industrial development bank, suspended
operations. In the case of the BNDA, a politically well
connected
borrower who owed the bank as much as US$78.9 million was
unable to
account for the funds he had borrowed.
Data as of November 1988
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