Open Letter to the Bank of Mozambique: Money as a Contract and the Failure of the Emission Standard

Martinho Cumbane"

To the Honorable Governor of the Bank of Mozambique,

We address Your Excellency and the Board of Directors of this prestigious institution, not only as users of the Metical, but as citizens who understand that the currency is, above all, a symbol of sovereignty and a certificate of trust. The recent statement issued by this Bank on February 4, 2026, regarding the 2024 Series banknotes lacking serial numbers, calls for a profound and critical reflection on the state of our fiduciary management and the transparency of our institutional communication.

The claim that such banknotes are “genuine but unsuitable for circulation” constitutes a technical paradox that undermines the credibility of the issuer. According to international banknote production standards, such as those established by the International Association of Currency Affairs (IACA) and the security printing guidelines of entities like De La Rue or Giesecke, these banknotes are genuine but unsuitable for circulation. &Devrient, the serial number is not an ornament; it is the biometric element of the banknote, guaranteeing its uniqueness and traceability. By allowing units without this requirement to reach the public, the Bank of Mozambique admits a severe breach in its chain of custody and quality control.

In a comparative technical analysis, we observe that the European Central Bank (ECB) and the US Federal Reserve (FED) follow strict protocols where any banknote that fails a single security criterion is classified as spoilage and destroyed before leaving the mint. As the specialized literature points out, notably in "The Banknote Book" (Owen Linzmayer), "the serial number is the primary tool for auditing and combating counterfeiting; a banknote without a serial number is, technically, an unfinished product and illegal for legal tender" (Linzmayer, 2022). By insisting on the "genuineness" of an unfinished product, the Bank of Mozambique ignores the "Zero Defect Manufacturing" doctrine applied to currency, which dictates that public confidence depends on the absolute uniformity of the medium of circulation.

Additionally, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) regulations emphasize that, in the event of an issuance error, the burden of correction should fall entirely on the Central Bank through an Active Collection. The manual "Central Bank Communications: Before, During and After Crisis" (Pohl & Hofer, 2019) clearly states that "opaque communications that minimize operational failures tend to exacerbate reputational risk, transforming technical errors into crises of institutional faith." By requiring citizens, often lacking transportation or easy access to the banking network, to travel to rectify an error at the "money factory," the Bank of Mozambique violates the principle of equity and financial inclusion.

Transparency demands that the Bank of Mozambique explain whether this incident resulted from a failure in the numbering machines of the contracted printer or from a violation of internal verification protocols. The attempt to deflect attention to the "good preservation of the banknotes" in the same document is an unfortunate communication strategy that tries to transfer responsibility for the integrity of a flawed document to domestic handling. A stable currency is not built solely on international reserves; it is built on the certainty that every Metical in a Mozambican's pocket is a perfect and auditable document. We therefore urge the Bank of Mozambique to adopt a radically transparent stance, acknowledging the operational failure and implementing collection mechanisms that do not punish the citizen for the State's error.

2025/12/3