Actividade do Banco Nacional Ultramarino em Moçambique (da fundação à saída de Moçambique – 1864/1974)

Abstract

In the exercise of BNU's activity, after its establishment in Mozambique, successive contracts were necessary, which regulated the Bank's relations with the Portuguese State, in order to adapt the Bank's operation to local and regional political and economic circumstances. It is a focal point and analysis of the Bank's role in the Mozambican economy, (as issuing, commercial and foreign exchange manager), particularly in international trade and foreign exchange capture. The change in the political economic panorama of Portugal since the 20s of our century, and the economic crises, led to political reforms - administrative and economic, both in the colony and in the BNU. The end of World War II also brought changes in the international financial panel that hit the BNU. As a result of the decentralization policy, the BNU benefited in the 1950s from greater administrative autonomy with the removal of direct state control. From 1963 onwards, as manager of means of payment abroad, the BNU established the link with the Bank of Portugal within the system of inter-territorial payments, a mechanism that legitimized on the part of Portugal the suction of foreign exchange generated by the colony, guaranteeing the market to Portuguese exporters in a process that indebted Mozambique. The reforms carried out initially by Salazar from 1961 and later by Caetano reached this Bank and, thanks to the development of national and international contestation to the colonial system, in particular with the advance of armed liberation struggles, they ended up in revolutions of the 70s. , which reached Portugal and the Overseas, which resulted in the loss of colonies by Portugal and consequences in the exit of the BNU. In this way, the activity of the BNU became confined to Portugal and on a definitively reduced scale, given that its strength came from the exploitation of the colonial market. The history of the BNU in Mozambique is an example of the history of institutions with a vocation for colonial exploitation, inserted in a specific economic context, in which the colonial power does not have the financial capacity to establish domination. The BNU thus became the driving vehicle for colonial policy in the monetary and financial sphere, aimed at exploiting the resources of Mozambique and the other colonies where it was represented (TRADUÇÃO NOSSA)