CODIGO RD 09

Banco Central de S. T. P.
NAP
NORMA DE APLICACAO PERMANENTE
PROPONENTE (S) P.O.G.
ENTRADA EM VIGOR 19/07/2010
DATA DA EMISSAO 21/06/2010
N° DOC FL. 1/30 09/2010

Regulation of the Interbank Clearing System — SICOI (Tele-clearing)

It being desirable to gradually improve the payment system serving the banking sector; Considering that the Dobra is the official currency of the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe, in accordance with the Monetary Law — Decree-Law 28/77 published in the Diário da República n.° 38, of September 22, 1977; Taking into account the entry into force of the Economic Cooperation Agreement in January 2010, which establishes a fixed exchange rate regime between the Dobra and the Euro, thereby enhancing the credibility of the national currency; In exercise of the powers conferred upon it by paragraph K) of no. 2 of Article 8° of its Organic Law; The Board of Directors of the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe resolves:

[Revocation Dates]

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Article 1.
1 - The Clearing House for cheques and other documents is hereby established.
2- The organization and operation of the clearing house shall comply with the provisions set forth in the Regulation of the Interbank Clearing System.

Article 2.
The Regulation of the Interbank Clearing System, hereinafter abbreviated as SICOI, is approved and brought into force, forming an integral part of this Permanent Application Standard (NAP). Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe, on June 21, 2010 [Reviewed] [Revocation Dates]

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CAPITULO I: AMBITO DE APLICACAO (Chapter I: Scope of Application)

ARTIGO 1°. Recipients
The recipients of these instructions are all participants in the Interbank Clearing System (SICOI), namely:
a) Central Bank; and b) Commercial banks, investment banks, or development banks;

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CAPITULO II: APLICACAO GERAL (Chapter II: General Application)

ARTIGO 2°. Object

1. The Interbank Clearing System (SICOI) performs, through clearing, the financial settlement of cheques, payment orders, and related documents issued in Dobras, in the standardized form established by the Central Bank, hereinafter collectively referred to as "documents".
2. The following documents are excluded from clearing:
   a) Those containing corrections or erasures in any of the pre-printed fields on their physical medium. b) Those that have previously been returned twice by the drawee bank due to lack or insufficiency of funds. c) Those that have been subject to an "alongue" (extended endorsement), regardless of the reasons for their origin. d) Those that do not conform to the standardized form. e) Those with a value exceeding one billion five hundred million Dobras (Dbs 1,500,000,000.00). f) When the presenting institution (holder of the cheque) presents cheques on which it is itself the holder, when drawn against the BCSTP. Such cheque must be forwarded to another banking institution for payment purposes. g) When there is a discrepancy between the currency of the cheque and the currency of the draw.

ARTIGO 3°. Participation

1. Participants in SICOI are commercial, investment, and development banks, hereinafter referred to as "banks", licensed by the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe, and the Central Bank itself.
2. The Central Bank participates in SICOI for the clearing of its own documents or documents presented to it for payment.
3. New banks are obliged to participate in SICOI, and for this purpose must request participation, which shall be authorized by the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe.
4. The participation of a new member shall take effect from the first business day of the month following the authorization date.
5. The Banking Supervision Directorate shall be responsible for determining whether an institution is authorized to operate as a commercial bank, development bank, or investment bank, in accordance with the Law.
6. Any bank authorized to operate by the Central Bank must request participation in SICOI through a formal document signed by authorized administrators, expressly declaring that the requesting bank is aware of this Regulation and agrees to its terms. A condition for granting authorization shall be that the bank maintains a current account in Dobras with the Central Bank.
7. Participating banks must operate at least one counter in the city of São Tomé. Other branches shall be represented in SICOI by the bank's head office counter.
8. A bank whose operating authorization is cancelled or suspended may not participate in SICOI.

ARTIGO 4°. Responsibilities of the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe The Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe, in addition to being a member of SICOI for document exchange, shall be responsible for ensuring participants:
a) A system that enables the reception, processing, and exchange of information via computer support; b) The determination of values to be cleared and settled; c) The updating of their respective deposit accounts; d) The communication of settled balances; e) The preparation of necessary statistics for the system, such as the number and value of cleared documents on a daily basis, and information on returned documents without payment, while not publishing or disclosing to other banks specific information about a particular bank; f) The facilities designated for the physical exchange of documents; g) The retention of exchanged information, aimed at resolving disputes between the presenting participant and the receiving (recipient) participant, for a period of five years following the presentation date.

ARTIGO 5°. Administration

1. The Central Bank shall appoint a staff member to act as Superintendent of the SICOI clearing sessions.
2. In case of conflict between participating members regarding delivered or received documents, or concerning the value to be paid or received; the Superintendent's decision shall be provisionally accepted, subject to subsequent ratification by the Central Bank's Government. If the conflict persists after financial settlement and no consensus is reached between the involved banks, the Central Bank's decision shall prevail.
3. The management of SICOI shall be supported by an Operations Committee composed of a representative from each participating institution and chaired by a representative selected by the BCSTP. The chairman shall serve a one-year term.
4. The Operations Committee shall have the following functions:
   4.1. Assist the Central Bank in improving provided services.
   4.2. Regulate the conduct of representatives.
   4.3. Propose the application of penalties to participants, in accordance with Article 20.
   4.4. Develop other activities assigned to it.
5. The Operations Committee shall meet at least four (4) times per year or upon formal request by a minimum of two participants, specifying the matters to be discussed.

ARTIGO 6°. Credentials
Participants in SICOI credential themselves in writing with the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe, while employees (permanent and substitute) with powers to represent them credential themselves at the physical exchange center.

ARTIGO 7°. Electronic Clearing

1. Banks make records of documents, appropriately packaged, regarding the values stated in the duly completed documents, as defined by the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe.

ARTIGO 8°. Delivery of physical documents to recipient banks

1. Session participants shall exchange documents among themselves, delivering to the recipient banks the documents presented/cleared to them, accompanied by triplicate remittance slips, with the original retained by the Central Bank.
2. The duly signed duplicate returned immediately to the presenting bank shall certify receipt of the documents.
3. On the reverse of the documents, a stamp (according to model 1 of Article 18) shall be affixed without the need for any signature, which, once completed, must bear the name of the presenting institution.
4. When completing the aforementioned slips, the following shall be observed:
   a) Identification of the presenting bank; b) Identification of the recipient bank; c) Listing of document numbers and amounts; d) Total value to be cleared.
5. In the absence of documents to deliver, participants are nonetheless obliged to receive documents destined for them.
6. It is not the responsibility of the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe or the designated entity to analyze the documents exchanged between participants nor to verify them via their respective remittance slips.

ARTIGO 9°. Procedures in anomalous cases
In the event of adverse or exceptional situations affecting, notably, the banking sector, such as public calamity, general power outage or communication failure, disturbances affecting the city or country, epidemic, storm, and earthquakes, clearing and financial settlement shall be carried out, provided that the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe considers the number of participants who have appeared at the clearing session and transmitted the relevant information to be reasonable.

ARTIGO 10.
I - Electronic Clearing Hours

1. Clearing and financial settlement of documents in SICOI must comply with the schedules defined by the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe. Outside these hours, it may be performed on the following day according to the pre-established period.
2. Daily clearing shall be conducted in two sessions on the same day: one digital document registration session, to be held between 09H00 and 11H00, and another return and confirmation session, between 14H00 and 16H00.
   In case of time tolerance in the second period, clearing shall be conducted from 09H00 to 11H00 in a single period.
3. In case of problems with communication infrastructure networks (interbank network), the clearing system shall operate in a presencial/traditional manner, with prior communication by the Central Bank to banks.

II - Physical Exchange Hours

1. Physical exchanges of documents shall take place at the BCSTP on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 14:00 to 15:00.
2. In case of time tolerance in the second period of the business day, document exchange shall be conducted from 09H00 to 10H00. If tolerance applies to both periods of the day, document exchange shall be postponed to the following business day.
3. All participants must be present punctually at the start of the session, and any participant may be excluded from the session if they arrive more than five minutes late.
4. Any changes to the schedules mentioned above shall be published by the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe with a minimum advance notice of 8 business days.

ARTIGO 11°. Clearing and Financial Settlement

1. The calculation of balances corresponding to each participant's position is performed based on information received by the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe, electronically, and in accordance with the defined schedule.
   1.1. It is exclusively the responsibility of the presenting institution to ensure consistency between that information and the actual values of the documents or operations concerned.
   1.2. Any discrepancies found "a posteriori" shall be promptly regularized by the involved participants in the manner they deem most appropriate.
2. The balances calculated after the verification period are settled through movements in the current account in Dobras maintained at the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe.
   2.1. The Central Bank is responsible for preparing a daily report with the total values in Dobras of payments made by banks in SICOI.
   2.2. When the total value of delivered documents exceeds the total value of received documents, the participant's account shall be credited. When the total value of received documents exceeds the total value of delivered documents, the participant's account shall be debited.
3. The clearing and financial settlement sessions referred to in the preceding numbers take place from Tuesday to Friday, except on days when a national holiday occurs or time tolerance applies to both periods of the day.
4. In case a recipient bank lacks sufficient funds in its current account, it must mobilize funds from another bank and deposit them into its account at the Central Bank within the clearing period.
5. If a participant fails to cover its net liability in clearing within the clearing period, the Superintendent shall inform the Central Bank's Government of the circumstance, which will determine the application of corrective measures.
6. If a participant is declared insolvent, the Central Bank shall inform the other participants thereof. The session shall not be considered concluded until all accounts have been satisfactorily debited.
7. If the Central Bank is informed by the courts, after financial settlement, that a bank has been declared bankrupt, each participant shall assume any losses regarding documents forwarded to it.
8. The Central Bank shall not be liable for losses that a bank may incur as a result of its participation in SICOI, except in cases of negligence or error by the Central Bank itself.
   8.1 All pending cases due to misrouting of documents, delayed return, failure to return documents, participant insolvency, or others shall be resolved directly between participants, unless they agree to use the current account in Dobras with the Central Bank for recording transactions.
9. The Central Bank shall, meanwhile, be responsible, in accordance with the terms and conditions of this Regulation, for its own documents presented at the clearing session and for the financial settlement of a net position, in the same manner as any other participant.

ARTIGO 12°. Definitive and irrevocable nature of operations

1. Only the recipient user with operator profile can validate a document.
2. Subsequently, the document validated by the recipient user but with authorizer profile shall be cleared.
3. The operations comprising SICOI are considered definitive and irrevocable from the moment financial settlement is effected at the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe.
4. The Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe makes account statements available to participants immediately after effecting financial settlement.

ARTIGO 13°. Cost

1. Fixed amounts established by the Central Bank of São Tomé and Príncipe are due for interbank clearing services.

ARTIGO 14°. Procedures and responsibilities of the participant

1. Banks must mandate SICOI through a list of operations from which payments to other participants shall be processed.
2. Any bilateral agreement for exchange and payment processing outside SICOI shall only be permitted with the consent of all participating members.
3. For clearing sessions, each bank shall have three staff members with different levels of responsibility:
   a) Operator, b) Authorizer, c) Representative for physical document exchange.
4. Each participating bank is also responsible:
   a) for detecting the situations referred to in number 2 of Article 2; b) for affixing, on all cheques, payment orders, and related documents, the presenting stamp (model 1, referred to in Article 18); c) for presenting at the physical exchange centers the documents and remittance slips, as well as delivering the electronic support referred to in number 1 of Article 7; d) for receiving all cheques and related documents returned by the drawee bank within the return periods.
5. The presenting bank, by sending documents to the clearing session, authorizes the Central Bank to debit its current account in Dobras for the subsequent return of delivered documents due to unpaid items.
6. If a recipient bank fails to honor the payment of any document presented in clearing due to insolvency, it must return to SICOI the documents in its possession; and sending banks shall accept the return of unpaid documents and authorize the Central Bank to debit their respective current accounts. Sending banks shall then debit the values in their clients' accounts, who will seek resolution of the conflict.
7. The presenting bank's stamp on documents represents a guarantee of the endorsements contained in the document or their absence, regardless of the document's value. The presenting bank shall indemnify the recipient bank for any responsibility it assumes arising from document endorsements. This guarantee shall be valid for a period of five years, starting from the date of the document's settlement.
8. The presenting bank shall maintain necessary records to reconstruct any payment for a period of one year, counted from the date of its presentation.
9. The physical document shall be scanned by a cheque reader or traditional scanner, where the image must be in JPEG format and archived for five years.
10. Document images shall be presented on both front and back sides.

ARTIGO 15°. Procedures and responsibilities of the recipient/drawee participant

1. Recipient banks are obliged to receive, during clearing sessions, all documents presented to them and carry out their processing and control.
2. Documents destined for a bank but not received by the participant, due to non-appearance of their representative or exclusion, or arriving late to the session, are considered delivered on that day for financial settlement and return period purposes.