Angola’s central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate for the second time in consecutive months. It said the aim is to curb inflation and boost the local currency amid falling world prices for oil, a major export of the African country.

The Banco Nacional de Angola, the nation’s central lender, announced in a statement on Monday the benchmark interest rate would increase by 50 basis points to 10.25 percent.

The central bank’s monetary policy committee had analysed inflation, fiscal and monetary accounts and the oil price to take “measures that contribute to reducing the volatility of prices in the national economy,” the bank said in the statement quoted by financial news agency Bloomberg.

The Angolan currency, the kwanza, fell to a record low against the U.S. dollar last month, said the bank. Inflation climbed to 9.61 percent in June, which would put annual inflation on course to exceed the bank’s estimate of 7 percent to 9 percent for 2015, according to the report.

The central bank previously raised the benchmark interest rate in June, citing similar reasons as those mentioned for the latest hike.

The benchmark rate increase was “bad news for Angola, whose external debt is increasing every month,” José Alves da Rocha, chief economist at the Catholic University of Angola, told Bloomberg. “But the main challenge is the behaviour of the oil price,” he added.