Eswatini policy interest rate
The discount rate — Eswatini's policy rate, the rate at which the Central Bank of Eswatini lends to commercial banks — decided by the Bank together with the Monetary Policy Consultative Committee (MPCC), which meets roughly every two months (six scheduled meetings a year). This is Eswatini's OWN rate, set in Mbabane, not the South African Reserve Bank's repo rate; but the Lilangeni is pegged one-for-one to the South African Rand under the Common Monetary Area, and CBE statements say in terms that the chosen level 'supports domestic economic performance and the Lilangeni parity to the South African Rand'.
| Current value | 6.75 percent |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2025-05-30 |
| Official source | Central Bank of Eswatini — Monetary Policy Statement dated 30 May 2025 (MPCC meeting of 30 May 2025), signed by Governor Dr Phil Mnisi: 'the Bank decided to cut the discount rate from 7.0 per cent to 6.75 per cent'; front panel: 'The Central Bank of Eswatini (CBE) reduced the interest rate from 7.0 per cent to 6.75 per cent' |
| Last verified | 2026-07-24 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
CUT 25bps on 30 May 2025 from 7.00% and HELD at 6.75% at every meeting since — 1 Aug 2025, 19 Sep 2025, 20 Nov 2025 (statement dated 21 Nov), 30 Jan 2026, 26 Mar 2026 (statement dated 27 Mar) and 29 May 2026. Direction check: the move that set the current level was a CUT, and everything after it is a hold, so effective_from is the date of the cut, not of the latest statement. CORROBORATION: the CBE's own Monthly Statistical Release May/June 2026 (published 10 July 2026) states 'The discount rate was at 6.75 per cent in June 2026' and 'Commercial banks' prime lending rate was at 10.25 per cent in June 2026' (https://www.centralbank.org.sz/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Monthly-Statistical-Release-May-June-2026.pdf). CMA CONTEXT — THIS IS ESWATINI'S OWN RATE, ANCHORED BY THE PEG: the Lilangeni is pegged 1:1 to the South African Rand and Eswatini is a Common Monetary Area member with South Africa, Namibia and Lesotho. The Rand is also legal tender and circulates alongside the Lilangeni in Eswatini. The CBE sets the discount rate itself and DOES deviate from the SARB: the SARB has been ABOVE the CBE for most of the last two years (SARB 7.00% while CBE was 6.75% through the second half of 2025; SARB cut to 6.75% on 20 Nov 2025, matching; then the SARB RAISED to 7.00% and the CBE did NOT follow — the 29 May 2026 statement records 'the SARB increased the repo rate by 25 basis points to 7.0 per cent' in the same breath as holding Eswatini at 6.75%). But the peg is the binding constraint and the Bank says so: the 21 Nov 2025 statement — 'At this level, the policy rate supports domestic economic performance and the Lilangeni parity to the South African Rand'; the 1 Aug 2025 statement — 'In taking the decision, the Bank cautiously considered the credibility of the peg against the South African Rand and the need to ensure adequate gross official reserves'; the 30 Jan 2026 statement — the Bank monitors developments 'that influence the movements of inflation and our currency peg'. Do NOT substitute a South African rate for this series. PRIME: the CBE does not set prime but tells banks what to charge — 'Banks are expected to maintain the prime lending rate on loans extended to individuals and businesses at 10.25 per cent until the next monetary policy meeting'. Prime has been 10.25% since the May 2025 cut (it was 10.50% before). EFFECTIVE-DATE TRAP: the CBE is inconsistent about effective dates. The 31 January 2025 statement says the rate is kept at 7 per cent 'with effect from 1 February 2025' — an explicit forward date — whereas the 30 May 2025 cut statement gives no separate effective date at all, so the announcement date is used here. DATE TRAP ON THE ARCHIVE: the CBE's Monetary Policy Statements index page mislabels several statements — it lists '30 March 2026' for a PDF dated 27 March 2026 (meeting 26 March 2026) and '20 January 2025' for a PDF dated 31 January 2025. Trust the PDF, not the index. RATIONALE FOR THE CURRENT HOLD (29 May 2026): headline inflation 2.0% in April 2026; 2026 inflation forecast raised to 3.31% and 2027 to 3.74% on the Middle East crisis and the oil price shock; real GDP +5.7% y/y in Q4 2025; private-sector credit E23.2bn; NPL ratio 6.8%; gross official reserves only E8.8bn as at 22 May 2026, 2.0 months of import cover (down to E8.1bn and 1.9 months by June 2026 — thin cover is the peg's pressure point). NEXT MEETING: the MPCC runs on a roughly two-month cycle (Jan, Mar, May, Jul/Aug, Sep, Nov), so the next decision is due late July or early August 2026 — re-check before serving. ACCESS: centralbank.org.sz is fetchable without a bot wall, but every statement is a PDF whose text layer is imperfect (the 30 May 2025 statement renders '2.1' as 'h.1' and '2025' as 'h0h5' in places) — read numbers off the page, not off a naive text extraction. Statement archive: https://www.centralbank.org.sz/monetary-policy-statements-2/
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-02-01 | 7 | Central Bank of Eswatini — Monetary Policy Statement dated 3 |
Get it programmatically
curl https://afriref.dev/v1/sz/policy-rate
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://afriref.dev/v1/sz/policy-rate/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/sz/policy-rateOther Eswatini series: VAT rate · minimum wage · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates