Approval has been given for more than R30 billion of asset swap transactions in terms of which institutional investors could exchange South African assets for foreign assets in this process. According to information available to the Reserve Bank, more than R17 billion of these transactions have been executed.
A number of internal arrangements were introduced to reduce the administrative burden of exchange controls, for example to grant the authorised dealers in foreign exchange more scope for discretionary decisions on exchange control applications, without prior reference to the Reserve Bank. In the process, virtually all exchange controls on current account transactions in the balance of payments (i.e.