Borkena
Toronto – Awash Bank, one of the major private banks in Ethiopia, on Saturday announced that it has supplied over 2200 clients with $498 million dollars in currency exchange between January 1st and March 31st this year.
It is also making claims that it has made over $100 million dollars available to other local banks. It did not specify as to which banks benefited from it. Also, no further explanation is provided as to how the bank managed to make it available to banks.
“Our bank is fulfilling its responsibility to address the foreign exchange shortage in our country once and for all and to create transparency,” Awash Bank said in an update it shared on its social media page.
It also said that the Bank was focused on “Strategic Commodities” to avert shortages. Of the total foreign currency made available to its clients $50 million was for cooking oil , $79 million for petrol oil, $20 million for sugar, and $11 million for rice.
Clients who have needs for medical and educational expenses overseas were also among those given priority, However, the bank did not specify the amount of foreign currency made available for that purpose.
Awash Bank anticipates no foreign currency shortage to satisfy the needs of its clients. It said “The National Bank of Ethiopia is making foreign currency available for auction” every fortnight, and “export and remittance is improving.”
The news update from the bank added “The bank is still making available the foreign exchange it has.”
The National Bank of Ethiopia has been announcing foreign currency auctions periodically for private banks after the government introduced market based forex exchange regime with unprecedented depreciation of the Ethiopian currency in July 2024.
Ethiopian birr has lost more than 100 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar and other major currencies since then. $US 1 is currently exchanging at a rate of over 137 Ethiopian birr. It used to be only 57 last July.
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