Sunday with Eden | Dec 25,2018
The Birr was devalued against a basket of major currencies twice over the last almost three decades. The first one was in 1992, when a new government under the late Meles Zenawi devalued the Birr from 2.07 to a dollar to five Birr. Following a series of depreciation since, the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) trimmed the currency by 17pc in 2010. Macroeconomists warned of major inflation as a result, and they were not wrong. Inflation picked up following the devaluation and before 2012 had reached 40pc to the exasperation of consumers.
Seven years went by and inflation came down to the single digits until only interrupted by the El Nino-induced drought in the mid-2010s. But in October 2017, the central bank took another slice out of the value of the Birr, this time with officials promising that inflation would not pick up. But it did and currently, together with a creeping 10-cent a day devaluation of the Birr in the last months of 2019, the inflation rate broke past 20pc, an amount as high as in 1992 but half it was recorded in 2008s historical high.
Increasing export earnings had been one of the main justifications for this policy. But neither the devaluation in 2010 nor in 2017 has been followed by an improvement to the state of the external sector. Now, as in then, revenues from the export of goods lies dormant at below three billion dollars.
PUBLISHED ON
Jan 05,2020 [ VOL
20 , NO
1028]
Sunday with Eden | Dec 25,2018
News Analysis | Jan 05,2020
News Analysis | Jan 05,2020
Verbatim | Feb 27,2021
Fortune News | Jul 18,2020
Commentaries | Jan 16,2021
View From Arada | Dec 10,2018
News Analysis | Jan 05,2020
Fortune News | Dec 07,2019
Agenda | Oct 12,2019
March 27 , 2021 . By BAMLAK FIKADU
An application developer who has recently taken up hiking to get some exercise, Migno...
February 13 , 2021 . By TADESSE TSEGAYE
In Arada, I stopped over by a hotel in front of Cinema Empire. I sat alone inside wit...
January 30 , 2021 . By FASIKA TADESSE
The Council of Ministers approved a regulation that will establish the Liability &...
January 16 , 2021
It was a sunny day on September 12, 1974. A machine gun mounted on top of a tank was...
April 17 , 2021
There is not a facet of life in Ethiopia today that is not convulsed by the moral cri...
April 10 , 2021
It is not often the case for regional states' leaders to swallow their vanity and dec...
April 3 , 2021
As an Auditor General, he was not the most conspicous of officials in the mainstream...
March 27 , 2021
In an unprecedented turn of irony, just as Ethiopia began an attempt to open up to th...
Put your comments here