Dili – Portuguese national guardsmen serving with the UN police force in East Timor were called Friday to the BNU bank in Dili, to control a crowd dissatisfied with a revised exchange rate for Portuguese escudos and Indonesian rupiahs.
The problems began shortly after the BNU (Lisbon-based Banco Nacional Ultramarino) branch in the East Timor capital opened on Friday morning. During the first hour of operations the bank was offering 33 escudos for each rupiah. This was subsequently changed to 32 escudos per rupiah following reception of the revised daily rates. The bank was forced to close for more than an hour as the Portuguese UN police sought to calm the crowd.
The BNU's director for East Timor, Tubal Gongalves, told Lusa that the rate change was a "perfectly normal" operation in all countries, adding that the worst problems were caused by speculators. "The black market has begun working at full strength and 90 percent of the people here to change money are from the black market," he said.
The growth of the black market has not been controlled by the authorities and is causing major problems for the territory's only fully operational bank, Gongalves stated. "These people, who normally don't have many scruples, come here and cause big problems and disruptions, going so far as to prevent our customers from entering," he said.
Thousands of East Timorese concentrate daily in front of the BNU branch in Dili to receive Portuguese government subsidies, exchange money and, more recently, inquire about bank loans under the World Bank program applied through the bank.
Moneychangers have in turn set up business outside the bank, changing any of the four currencies that are legal tender in East Timor: the escudo and rupiah, along with the American and Australian dollars. With calculators and money in hand, they offer "favorable" rates to customers entering or leaving the bank.
The former Portuguese colony of East Timor has been under UN administration since last October, following 24 years of occupation by Indonesia.