Swaziland - Money

The lilangeni is maintained at par with the South Africa rand, as it is in the de facto rand area involving Swaziland, South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. The rand was on par with the U.S. dollar in the early 1980s, but has since lost value, very rapidly at times in the latter 1990s. In mid-2001, the lilangeni stood at E8.27:US$1. In March 1995, a 2-tier financial system (which allowed a different exchange rate for certain transactions) was

Trade (expressed in billions of US$): Swaziland
	Exports	Imports
1975	.199	.180
1980	.369	.623
1985	.180	.324
1990	.557	.663
1995	.957	1.105
1998	N/A	N/A
SOURCE: International Monetary Fund. International Financial Statistics Yearbook 1999.

Exchange rates: Swaziland
emalangeni (E) per US$1
Jan 2001	7.7803
2000	6.9056
1999	6.1087
1998	5.4807
1997	4.6032
1996	4.2706
Note: The Swazi lilangeni is at par with the South African rand; emalangeniis the plural form of lilangeni.
SOURCE: CIA World Factbook 2001 [ONLINE].

ended with the abolition of the financial rand, making the currency more vulnerable to international reaction to political developments in South Africa.