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Jun 7 , 2026

A Small Slide in the Birr Reveals a Bigger Split Over Dollars

The foreign-exchange market spent the first week of June moving, but not breaking. After weeks without a Central Bank forex auction, the Birr (the Brewed Buck) weakened modestly across commercial-bank boards, tracing an orderly depreciation against the U.S. dollar (the Green Buck). The movement w...

May 31 , 2026

The Birr Looks Calm, But Banks Fight Over Dollars

The Birr (Brewed Buck) ended May's final week quietly. It barely shifted against the dollar last week. Yet daily cash-rate told a more unsettled story about banks no longer speaking with one voice. The average buying rate jumped from 155.50 Br on May 25 to 156.16 Br on May 30, while the average selling rate climbed from 158.57 Br to 159.18 Br. Although the average buying rate depreciated less than half a percentage point, the calm concealed wide gaps, sticky low quotes and banks bidding aggressively for scarce cash dollars. By Saturday, Oromia Bank was buying a dollar at 162.73 Br, while...


May 23 , 2026

Forex Auction Uncovers a Market Under Pressure

Last week, the Birr - Brewed Buck - crossed a line the foreign-exchange market had long treated as a warning, not a price. Commercial banks' cash rates reorganised around a reference point of 160 Br threshold, which was crossed in auction bidding and breached in some posted rates. The trigger was the Central Bank's auction on May 19, 2026, the largest since April 2025. The Central Bank allotted half a billion dollars, accepted bids as high as 160.9 Br, although settled at a weighted average of 159.9 Br, and recorded a lowest successful bid of 157.3 Br. Demand was roughly twice the supply...


May 17 , 2026

Brewed Buck Looks Steady, But Banks Signal Dollar Stress

The Birr's (Brewed Buck) official cash market looked calm through Saturday, May 16, 2026. But the calm was administrative, not market-driven. With the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) absent from auctions for months, commercial banks made marginal changes to posted rates. Most preserved the two percent spread between buying and selling quotes, leaving the forex market appearing stable while revealing a split between immobile banks, micro-adjusters and premium posters whose rates implied aggressive forex mobilisation and balance-sheet pressure. Over the week, the average commercial-bank bu...

Money Market Watch

May 9 , 2026

Banks Nudge the Birr, But Dare Not Let It Move

The foreign-exchange board's last week offered a deceptively quiet picture of the market. The implied depreciation was 0.05pc in six days, an unmistakably slow crawl. The calm is striking because t...

May 3 , 2026

A Quiet Forex Market Reveals the Limits of Monetary Reform

The Birr's (Brewed Buck) market passed last week quietly. Beneath it, the week exposed a currency board moving less by price discovery than by administrative habit. With no foreign exchange auction...

Apr 26 , 2026

Brewed Buck Stays Calm, But Not Idle. Stability Mirrors Discipline, Not Necessarily Liquidity

The Birr (Brewed Buck) spent the six days to April 25 doing what often passes for calm in the official foreign exchange market. It barely moved. More than a month after the National Bank of Ethiopia ...

Apr 19 , 2026

In the Forex Market, Stability Masks a Lack of Competition

Last week, the Brewed Buck neither strengthened nor weakened in any meaningful sense. It inched along a carefully managed path, its value against the dollar shaped as much by policy design as by marke...

Apr 5 , 2026

Forex Market Looks Stable But Tightly Managed

The striking feature of the official foreign-exchange market last week was not movement, but restraint. The notable non-news development of recent weeks was that lull. Governor Eyob Tekalegn (PhD) ref...

Mar 28 , 2026

Birr Holds Steady as the Foreign Currency Market Splinters

The Birr (Brewed BucK) looked calm on the surface last week. The week opened with the Central Bank posting the highest buy quote, but it closed with Oromia Bank as the most aggressive commercial bi...

Mar 21 , 2026

Brewed Buck Takes a Small Tumble, the Banks Show Their Feathers

The Birr's (Brewed Buck) official retail market spent last week moving less like a freely shifting market than a carefully managed crawl lower. Across 30 banks, the average buying rate trailed from...

Mar 14 , 2026

Dollar Quotes Rise by Inches as Banks Keep Margins in Line

The foreign-exchange market crept forward last week, but behind the drift, the demand for hard currency and the contest for confidence grew. Between March 9 and March 14, 2026, every commercial bank e...

Mar 7 , 2026

Brewed Buck Slips Quietly as Banks' Forex Boards Split Wide

The Brewed Buck barely moved over the five weeks to March 7, 2026, yet the stillness on the surface concealed a market growing more uneven by the day. Banks' average posted buying rate for the doll...

Feb 28 , 2026

Brewed Buck Continues to Slide, Not Jump, by Design

The forex trading days last week, ending on February 28, 2026, the cash-rate board for the Birr (Brewed Buck) behaved less like a free exchange and more like a controlled march. Across the 30-bank...

Feb 21 , 2026

Undersubscribed Dollar Auction Delivers a Rare Birr Rebound

Central Bank Governor Eyob Tekalegn (PhD) spent last week signalling he was ready to spend currency to steady the Birr, the “Brewed Buck”, and defend the narrow corridor in which it traded. His to...

Feb 15 , 2026

Liberalised Forex Market Still Moves by Decree, Not by Price

Last week's Birr–Dollar moves revealed a market nominally liberalised but still behaving like an administered system. The rate acted more as a benchmark than as a clearing price, with banks trading...

Feb 7 , 2026

Forex Market Remains Theatre of the Managed, the Marginal

The foreign exchange market has become less a platform for genuine price discovery and more a managed showcase, where the real action unfolds away from the main stage. For the past week, banks post...

Jan 31 , 2026

Central Bank Keeps a Tight Grip as the Birr Crawls Downward

Last week's sequence of foreign-exchange rates revealed a story more revealing than any headline auction figure. It showed a currency regime in which depreciation is administered rather than discovere...

Jan 24 , 2026

Birr Holds Steady as Banks Close Ranks

The foreign exchange last week displayed tranquillity, although the numbers revealed a market steered more than stirred. The Birr hardly “traded”, as commercial banks marched in lockstep, preserve...

Jan 17 , 2026

Forex Calm Masks a Market on Administrative Watch

The foreign exchange market continued to present a telling picture of a system guided more by administrative measures than by the spontaneous market forces of price discovery. The most remarkable a...


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