What is import cover?
Import cover is the number of months a country could keep paying for imports using only its foreign-exchange reserves — a standard gauge of external-buffer adequacy, with three months treated as the rough minimum. It is reserves divided by average monthly import spending.
Import cover measures the national stock, not what reaches an individual importer — a country can show ample cover while businesses still wait in an allocation queue. Angola has held more than seven months of import cover yet importers waited months to pay suppliers, while thinner-reserve markets sit near or below the three-month line.
The gap between healthy headline cover and slow real-world access is the reserves paradox at the heart of FX-constrained trade.