Policy Bank Freezes Loans by Ex-President

September 19 , 2020

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The board of directors of the Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) has designated Yohannes Ayalew (PhD), former vice governor and chief economist of the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), as the new president replacing Haileyesus Bekele. The board has also frozen the loans approved by the outgoing president. Yohannes, who is also a board member of DBE, was an executive director at the Ethiopian Development Research Institute. Prior to assuming the presidential position, Yohannes left the board of the state policy Bank. The board of the Bank, following the resignation of Haileyesus, froze all the loans he approved, according to sources close to the case. Haileyesus, who tendered his resignation citing personal reasons on September 10, 2020, had served as the vice president of the Bank in charge of credit management until he was promoted to president on July 4, replacing Getahun Nana. Before moving to DBE in 2016, Haileyesus was president of the then Construction & Business Bank (CBB), which has since dissolved into the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE). Over the past two years, the Bank, well-known for amassing a high rate of non-performing loans, has been preparing a Five-Year Reform document to address its structural drawbacks.