The volume of mandatory reserves deposited by commercial banks with the Bank of Mozambique (BdM) increased by around 20% in 2025, reaching $4.1 billion, according to data from the central bank’s latest statistical report.
According to the institution’s document, the volume of mandatory reserves held by commercial banks with the monetary authority had reached a historic high of $4.5 billion in December 2024, immediately before the decision to relax the mandatory reserve ratios in January 2025.
According to the history presented in the report, in November 2025, the amount of these reserves stood at around US$3.4 billion, having recorded a significant increase in the following month, when it rose again to approximately US$4 billion, the highest level observed throughout 2025.
The statistical report does not provide explanations for this sharp growth in just one month. The Bank of Mozambique set commercial banks’ reserve requirements at 10.5% for deposits in local currency and 11% for deposits in foreign currency at the beginning of January 2023. During the first six months of that year, the central bank decided to increase these ratios twice, with the aim of “absorbing excess liquidity in the banking system, which has the potential to generate inflationary pressure,” the institution explained at the time.
The last of these increases took place in June 2023, when the coefficients reached historically high levels: 39% of deposits in national currency and 39.5% of deposits in foreign currency were now immobilized in bank reserves.
Since the end of December 2022, when the volume of these reserves corresponded to around US$972 million, the amount deposited by commercial banks in the central bank increased by nearly 400% by the end of 2024.
Faced with a shortage of foreign currency in the domestic market, Mozambican businesspeople had been arguing since 2024 that the central bank needed to ease the mandatory reserve ratios in foreign currency.
The decision was finally taken on January 27, 2025, when the Monetary Policy Committee (CPMO) of the Bank of Mozambique decided to reduce the ratios to 29% in national currency and 29.5% in foreign currency.
