Explainer: Sarb – ownership, mandate and independence

In recent months, debates about the South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) have focused broadly on three aspects – its shareholding, its mandate and its independence.

The three debates are somewhat convoluted. They are indeed three different issues, but they are interlinked.

Let’s turn to the issue of ownership first.

The Sarb is one of only eight central banks in the world with private shareholders. The others are in Belgium, Greece, Italy, Japan, San Marino, Switzerland and Turkey.

The debate about shareholding in South Africa’s Reserve Bank centres on the issue of nationalisation. Some political players – such as the third largest political party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – are calling for ownership of the bank to be transferred from private shareholders to the South African government, and has tabled a bill in parliament to achieve this objective.

The issue is highly charged. But it is also not very well understood. There’s an assumption that a change of ownership would automatically mean a change in the role the bank plays. This isn’t the case because in fact the bank’s shareholders play no role in its mandate. In that sense it doesn’t matter who the shareholders are. Because they can’t affect its mandate, nationalisation won’t affect the independence of the central bank.

But there are other ways in which the bank’s ability to do its job can be undermined. This is where the bank’s primary mandate comes in.

The mandate issue

The mandate of the Sarb is set out in the Constitution, which says:

The primary objective of the bank shall be to protect the value of the currency of the Republic of South Africa in the interest of balanced and sustainable economic growth in the Republic.

The bank also adheres to an inflation target which was put in place in 2000. This requires it to keep inflation within a band of 3% to 6%. The bank uses monetary policy and interest rate decisions to achieve this objective. In short, when the inflationary trend declines, the interest rate declines and when the inflationary trend increases, the interest rate increases.

The issue of the bank’s focus on keeping inflation within this band – and the fact that its mandate clearly sets out that managing inflation is its core job – is hotly contested.

Those on the left of the political spectrum, including the country’s largest trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), argue that the Sarb shouldn’t focus primarily on inflation. Instead, they say, it should also be taking economic growth as well as the employment rate in the country into account.

The bank’s response has been that its current mandate is broad enough because it says quite clearly that, while managing inflation, it must do so “in the interest of balanced and sustainable economic growth in the Republic”.

For those like myself who oppose a broader mandate, the issue is quite simple: giving the bank a broader mandate raises the danger that the bank will take its eye off inflation because it is having to concentrate on other issues. This, in turn, could lead to rampant inflation.

The bank’s mandate is crucial in another respect. The Sarb’s ability to pursue its mandate without interference from government is how its independence is measured.

South Africa’s central bank has acted on the whim of politicians before. It didn’t end well.

How political interference can hurt

In the 1980s inflation rose dramatically, resulting in the country suffering its highest inflation rates ever: an average of about 15% per annum for the decade.

Despite the fact that rising prices called for the bank to act by raising interest rates, it failed to do so on instructions of the government. Inflation wreaked havoc on the earnings of ordinary South Africans, and on the value of people’s pensions.

The government’s interference was dramatically brought to light ahead of a by-election in 1984 in a Johannesburg suburb called Primrose. Just prior to the by-election the government instructed the Sarb to drop the interest rate. This subsequently became known as the Primrose Prime incident.

Where the focus should be

The debates swirling around the central bank have created uncertainty, despite reassurances from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The president needs to do more. He also needs to establish certainty about the executive management of the Sarb.

An executive vacancy created by the resignation of one of the deputy governors, Francois Groepe, must be filled as a matter of urgency. And the president should make clear his intention to reappoint governor Lesetja Kganyago and deputy governor Daniel Mminele, whose terms expire this year.

Read: Sarb deputy governor resigns

These appointments are under the purview of the president. The Sarb Act stipulates that the president must fill executive positions after consultation with the minister of finance and the bank’s board.

South Africa needs stability at its central bank to ensure a growth trajectory for the country. Ramaphosa should get the process of filling the vacancy and providing certainty about the future of Kganyago and Mminele underway sooner rather than later.

Jannie Rossouw is head of the School of Economic & Business Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand. 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original here.