On the eve of Gena, aka Ethiopian Christmas, the capital was bustling with the holiday spirit as the Christian citizenry made preparations for the following day's festivities.

Banks were among the hot spots during the holiday's eve, since many people stopped in to withdraw cash to shop for last minute items, while others collected money sent from relatives living abroad.

There were long queues at many of the private and commercial banks by customers who wanted to withdraw cash and process remittances.

The peak time for the flow of remittances is Gena, the Ethiopian New Year and Fasika, aka Easter. The popular currencies are the United States dollar, the UAE dirham and the Saudi riyal.

Remittance recipients usually go to their nearby bank branch or their client bank to withdraw a remittance sent from a relative or a friend from overseas.

This trend puts the banks in an intense competition to collect as much foreign currency as they can through a lottery system that awards clients through a raffle. They offer gifts ranging from cars to washing machines and smartphones to mobile cards.

The lotteries aim to attract people who change money in the parallel market and to motivate the growth of the formal market. This approach is one of the mechanisms used by the Banks to address the shortage of forex.

Over the past couple of years, the foreign currency crunch has been severe at the banks and the economy in general. The gross international reserves as of September 30, 2018, were sufficient only to cover 2.6 months of import bills.

On the eve of the holiday, Mezgebu Birhanu, in his mid-20s, was at Bank of Abyssinia's branch near National Stadium to receive the money his big brother sent him from the United States. The Bank gained 80.9 million Br from foreign currency dealing in the last fiscal year.

Mezgebu, who is a second-year student of mechanical engineering at Adama Science & Technology University, gets at least 100 dollars every two months from his brother.

This time his brother sent him 150 dollars for the holiday through Western Union, one of the prominent money transfer agents.

“Even though I haven’t won the lotto that is run by the Bank for processing remittances yet, it keeps motivating me to use their services,” Mezgebu said.

Shemsdin Abedi, 33, who is engaged in private business was at the Stadium branch of Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), the biggest bank in the nation that gained one billion dollars in the first quarter of this fiscal year from remittances and exports.

Born in Harar but living in the capital, Shemsdin gets remittances at least four times a year from his brother.

To win the hearts of people to collect remittances like Shemsdin and Mezgebu, banks use lotteries as a promotional tool after getting permission from the National Lottery Administration.

Awash Bank, the leading private bank, uses a lottery system to attract customers in this way. The Bank started running the lottery in 2016 and is now holding it for the eighth time during this Gena season.

Awash offers recipients of remittances a chance to win gifts that include smartphones, 32-inch televisions, water dispensers and Isuzu cars. The total cost of the prizes Awash offers is close to 3.4 million Br.

Those who receive remittances through Awash from December 30, 2019, to April 2020 will automatically go into a series of drawings to win prizes. A client that exchanges foreign currency worth over 50 dollars at the bank will receive a raffle number with a chance of winning a prize and 25 Br of mobile airtime.

Awash made 2,043 remittance transactions during the week before Gena, according to a person familiar with the issue.

Pioneering the service, the giant state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) has held 18 rounds of its lottery raffle. It currently offers automobiles and Bajaj vehicles, which have a capacity of caring six people, for the 19th round of the raffle.

The Bank’s latest round began in December 2019 and will be staying until February 2020.

The lottery lures people to use the bank for processing remittances, according to Yeabsera Kebede, CBE's corporate communications acting director.

“During the holiday season, the amount of remittance will double,” Yeabsera adds.

Most of the remittance is generated from the Middle East, the US and Europe.