By the end of December 2019, assets in international banks of households residing in Congo-Brazzaville were $ 533 million, according to statistics provided by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), an institution based in Basel, Switzerland, and which acts as the Central banks of central banks around the world.
The majority of these assets ($ 514 million) are deposits, including $ 297 million in Euros, $ 54 million in dollars and the equivalent of nearly $ 163 million in an unknown currency. These assets have remained stable since the middle of 2019, even as the Central Bank is pushing CEMAC economic players to repatriate currencies in order to strengthen the sub regional foreign exchange reserves which remain fairly fragile.
BIS statistics do not provide a clear picture of the Congolese owners of these bank deposits abroad. It should also be noted that households in this country are indebted to international banks for up to $ 117 million. At the CEMAC level, household assets in foreign banks were $ 1.5 billion.
With $ 354 million, Gabonese households follow those of Congo. Chad is the country where households have the least assets in international banks ($ 38 million).
A non-negligible part of CEMAC’s assets in international banks belongs to a category of undisclosed actors, which can be the government, commercial banks, the non-bank financial sector or even other households .