Should Africa’s Dream of Monetary Union be kept Alive? Joe Atta-Mensah Capacity Development Division ECA May 2014 1
Presentation • Introduction • Africa’s Experience with Monetary Union. • Theory of Monetary Union . • Links between Monetary Union and Price Stability. • Policy Mix • Conclusion 2
Introduction • African Nations are vigorously pursing an integration Agenda • As part of their integration agenda, African regional economic communities (RECs) have or are in the process of establishing monetary unions. • Monetary integration contributes significantly to deepening regional integration, especially for RECs, which have objectives of creating common markets. • Regional economic cooperation in Africa dates as far back as the beginning of the last century. The cooperation primarily focussed on the facilitation of international trade and payments. 3
Introduction (2) • International monetary arrangements have been experiencing instability since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods agreements in the early 1970s. • In the 1980s global economies were faced with misalignment of the major currencies. The decade also saw massive capital flight towards the United States and other industrialized countries from the developing world, particularly after the debt crises and the cutting-off of new loans. • the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s also brought with it deep financial crises in Asia, Argentina and Brazil. These challenges contributed in depressing economic growth. It also brought home the importance of macroeconomic stability. 4
Introduction (3) • During the 1970s/1980s, developing countries have had to bear some costs as their economies suffered immensely during the period. • Low and declining share of world trade and the continent’s marginal financial integration with the rest of the world, based on a share of GDP, the average African country is far more open to trade than the average developed country. • Hence African countries are consequently more vulnerable to volatile shifts in their terms of trade as well as shifts in exchange rates due to the need to repay foreign borrowings in hard currency. • This paper focuses on Africa's agenda of creating a monetary union as a way of addressing macroeconomic instability with view of promoting economic growth. 5
Africa’s experience with Monetary Union • Monetary cooperation between different countries in Africa has been going on for a long time. • During the colonial period, French and British colonies had in place common monetary arrangements. • At the time, these arrangements were established to facilitate the administration of the colonies and the collection of seigniorage, rather than to promote exchange rate management and fiscal policy. 6
Africa’s experience with Monetary Union (2) • The British and the French monetary cooperation arrangements were not the same. • The British currency boards were rooted in English central banking and therefore performed functions similar to those of the Bank of England. • The French currency boards in the colonies followed the guidelines and principles of French central banking. Hence, like the Banque de France, the French currency boards lent significantly to the local banking system as the currencies were backed by the French Treasury. 7
Africa’s experience with Monetary Union (3) • During the colonial period, a number of monetary arrangements existed in the Eastern and Southern Africa regions. • In East Africa, a common currency area was established in 1919 for Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika (now Tanzania) with the creation of the East African Currency Board (EACB). • In 1936, Zanzibar joined the common currency area. During the Second World War, the East African shilling was used as legal tender in Somaliland as well as in parts of Ethiopia and Eritrea, and in 1951 Aden was included in the currency area. • A monetary system similar to that of East Africa was established for the Federation of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi). A Southern Rhodesia Currency Board (SRCB) was established in 1938 by a colonial Act. 8
Africa’s experience with Monetary Union (4) • South Africa, Basutoland (Lesotho), Bechuanaland (Botswana) and Swaziland had their own currencies during colonial time. But after 1881, the pound sterling became the standard currency in these countries and remained in use until 1961. • In 1974, the Rand Monetary Agreement (RMA) was signed and the rand became the only legal tender in the RMA zone, which included Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland. However, Botswana pulled out from RMA in 1975. • Political pressures caused most these monetary arrangements to be dissolved after independence. 9
The Theory of Monetary Union Mundell (19610 proposes four criteria for monetary union: • Free movement of labour across member countries of the union. This includes physical ability to travel (visas, workers' rights, etc.), lack of cultural barriers to free movement (such as different languages) and institutional arrangements. • Open markets to ensure capital mobility as well as price and wage flexibility across the Union. This is needed so that the market forces of supply and demand automatically distribute money and goods to where they are needed. It also ensures that asymmetric shocks could be assimilated. • 10
The Theory of Monetary Union (2) • There is a risk sharing system such as an automatic fiscal transfer mechanism to redistribute money to countries/areas/sectors of the Union which have been adversely affected by the observance of the first two assumptions. The transfers will generally be in the form of tax-revenue redistribution to less developed areas of a country/region in the Union. • The economic structures of the economies of the Union should be similar. The need for this criterion is to ensure that the countries face similar vulnerability to asymmetric shocks or have the same business cycle. This allows the shared central bank to promote growth in downturns and to contain inflation in booms. Should countries in a currency union have idiosyncratic business cycles, then optimal monetary policy may diverge and union participants may be made worse off under a joint central bank. 11
The Theory of Monetary Union (3) • Kenan (1963) expanded on Mundell’s work by concluding that countries with highly diversified economies are good candidates for the formation of a monetary union. This is because economic diversification helps countries to adjust rapidly to negative external shocks quickly than economies that are not diversified. • McKinnon (1963) added to Mundell’s model by arguing that highly open economies also good candidates for a monetary union since a common currency is very important for their stability and prosperity. McKinnon points out that monetary union is beneficial to open economies because it reduces the uncertainty associated to exchange rate fluctuations, particularly for the purpose of trade. 12
Convergence Criteria • Its inflation rate is not more than 1.5 per cent higher than the average of the three lowest inflation rates among the EU member States • Its long-term interest rate is not more than 2 per cent higher than the average observed in these three low-inflation countries • It has joined the exchange rate mechanism of the EMS and has not experienced a devaluation during the two years preceding the entrance into the union 13
Convergence Criteria (2) • Its government budget deficit is not higher than 3 per cent of its GDP (if it is, it should be declining continuously and substantially and come close to the 3 per cent norm, or alternatively, the deviation from the reference value (3 per cent) should be exceptional and temporary and remain close to the reference value (Art. 104c (a)) • Its government debt should not exceed 60 per cent of GDP (if it does, it should diminish sufficiently and approach the reference value (60 per cent) at a satisfactory pace. 14
Monetary policy in a monetary union • The central bank of the union should be independent and the clear objective of price stability. To fulfil this mandate effectively, the central bank of the union and the national central banks of member states should be free of from political interference. • The central bank of the union must ensure that longer-term inflation expectations have been firmly anchored at levels consistent with the definition of price stability (or agreed inflation target). • The protocol governing the setting up of the monetary union should prohibit monetary financing of public deficits. 15
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