Also, the inflation rate is hovering at around 33% while bank-lending rates are at about 40% in the southern African country.

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Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond has resigned a week after the bank was fined a record amount for trying to manipulate inter-bank lending rates.

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We have yet to see prosecutions for manipulation of the Libor inter-bank lending rates.

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He also said no government minister had asked him to "lean on" Barclays over its inter-bank lending rates.

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It recently launched a criminal investigation, in the wake of the Libor scandal, into the rigging of inter-bank lending rates.

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Mr Miliband says he wants to make it easier to prosecute bankers who misbehave -- such as the employees at Barclays, who colluded with others in fixing the inter-bank lending rates, or Libor.

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The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) argued in its recent annual report that huge growth in bank reserves was driving overnight-lending rates to zero, causing the market for unsecured overnight lending to atrophy.

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The Bundesbank believes that minimum reserve requirements give a central bank tighter control over bank lending and help to smooth out money-market interest rates.

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Shortly after Naoto Kan, then the deputy prime minister and now also the finance minister, gave a noisy warning of deflation's threat late last year, the bank adopted a new lending facility to boost the money supply and bring down money-market rates.

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There has been a furore over the fixing of the London inter-bank lending rate, known as Libor, which is considered to be one of the most crucial interest rates in finance.

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