Among other duties, it is in charge of ensuring financial stability, maintaining the internal and external value of the local currency, and promoting credit and exchange conditions that facilitate the balanced growth of the national economy.

The Somali Savings and Credit Bank had branches in Baidoa, Beledweyne, Berbera, Bosaso, Burco, Galkacyo, Qardho, Hargeisa and Kismayo, and for a while in Djibouti.

[7] On 8 February 1975, the government renamed the Banca Nazionale Somala to the Central Bank of Somalia (Bankiga Dhexe ee Soomaaliya).

In 2009, the Transitional Federal Government re-opened the Central Bank of Somalia in Mogadishu as part of its campaign to restore national institutions.

[10] In November 2013, Bashir Isse was appointed on an interim basis as Somalia's Central Bank Governor, following the resignation of his predecessor Abrar earlier in the month.

[18] Owing to a lack of confidence in the local currency, the US dollar is widely accepted as a medium of exchange alongside the Somali shilling.

This inflationary environment, however, is expected to come to an end as soon as the Central Bank assumes full control of monetary policy and replaces the presently circulating currency introduced by the private sector.

[18] Although Somalia has had no central monetary authority for upwards of 15 years between the outbreak of the civil war in 1991 and the subsequent re-establishment of the Central Bank of Somalia in 2009, the nation's payment system is actually fairly advanced due primarily to the widespread existence of private money transfer operators (MTO) that have acted as informal banking networks.

[9] These remittance firms (hawalas) have become a large industry in Somalia, with an estimated US$1.6 billion annually remitted to the region by Somalis in the diaspora via money transfer companies.

This will serve to broaden the scope of the national payments system to include formal cheques, which in turn is expected to reinforce the effectiveness of the use of monetary policy in domestic macroeconomic management.