BNA has reinforced the need for banking financial institutions to make a strict assessment of current invisibles exchange operations covering technical and specialized services agreements, through Circular Letter No. 002/DCC/2020, of 18 August 2020.

In this regard, BNA has issued guidelines with which banks must comply when validating payments under service agreements or invoices to non-resident entities, notably the following:

• The hiring of services must be limited to specific services, such as technical assistance or specialized services, which are not available in Angola;
• The hiring of foreign workers through service agreements is not recommended when they have an employment relationship with the company with which the foreign exchange resident entity has entered into a service agreement;
• When it is a legal person, the entity hired must be a company with proven technical capacity in the sector and the relevant specialty, and with an appropriate personnel structure to provide the contracted services;
• When the hired entity is a company belonging to the group of the contracting entity, the latter must be able to prove that the prices to be charged under the contract are market prices;
• The contract in question must not contain any vague, imprecise or indeterminate objects such as 'advice', 'consultancy', 'management', 'marketing' or 'procurement', while the term and value of the contract must be consistent with its purpose;
• The existence of a number of service agreements with a single contracting entity will be subject to a specific analysis of the need for that situation;
• Banks should carry out an assessment of all ongoing and active contracts of their customers under which payments are being made, in order to ensure that those contracts are legitimate and comply with the guidelines set out in the Circular Letter;
• Banks must refuse to carry out transactions where the necessary validation procedures cannot be adequately fulfilled.

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