In the more sophisticated economies, such as we have in South Africa, money is created by banking institutions through their lending and investment operations. The control over the money supply therefore becomes more difficult, and the central bank can only indirectly influence money creation with instruments such as interest rate variations, overall liquidity management, open market operations, and money market interventions.
With the current liberalisation of financial markets and the tendency for an integration of financial services in gigantic multi-functional and multi-national financial conglomerates, the task to protect the value of the currency, that is, to keep inflation low, has become more difficult.