Bank of Algeria straightens out banking overhead expenses

The Bank of Algeria has decided to submit the national banks and the financial bodies to a new set of stringent regulations.

The decision was published on Wednesday June 26^th 2013 in the Official Gazette number 29.

Henceforth, the banks and the financial bodies in Algeria can put forth new savings and credit products after a prior authorization from the Bank of Algeria.

Under this new legal document signed last April by the Governor of the Bank of Algeria, Mohamed Laksaci, the banking operations will be defined as being the set of actions carried out by the banks and financial bodies in their relations with the customers as stipulated by the 2003 ordinance.

The banking conditions mean, in keeping with the terms of the new document, the payment, the tariffs and the commissions applied during these operations.

These conditions should be defined in the convention on the opening of a bank-account or on the relevant documents conveyed to this effect.

The new regulations give free reign to the banks to fix the debit and creditor interest rates without however exceeding the excessive interest rate set by the Bank of Algeria itself.

It has also been decided that the commissions’ tariffs drawn by the various banks by right of operations of external import trade and revenue transfers will reach a set ceiling without any other overdue costs to be imposed by any other party.

In this connection, the banks are compelled from now on to convey to the general inspection department of the Bank of Algeria a quarterly assessment report on all the revenues derived from the operations linked to external import trading and revenue transfers.