Banks Push the Birr Past 160 as the Central Bank Sits Out

Jul 25 , 2026.

Commercial banks pushed the Birr (the Brewed Buck) to a fresh low against the dollar last week. The industry's average buying rate crossed 160 Br for the first time, and the Central Bank, which is meant to anchor the market, did not step in to intervene once.

The average bid across the 28 commercial banks jumped from 159.95 Br on Monday to 160.06 Br on Saturday. The average offer moved from 163.15 Br to 163.26 Br. Over the week, this was a shift of 0.07pc, small enough to read as stability.

However, the direction was not. Across the five daily transitions, banks made 66 upward revisions to their buying rates and one downward. That is not two-way trading but a queue.

The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) has not held a foreign exchange auction for several weeks. However, it has announced four for August and September 2026, together offering half a billion dollars, demonstrating its firepower to defend the Brewed Buck. Until these clear, the daily postings are the market's only price signal, produced less by transactions than by banks watching one another.

The Bank of Abyssinia's crossing of the 160 Br line was the week's clearest marker. It opened at 159.55 Br and closed at 160.09 Br, a gain of 0.53 Br, 0.33pc. It was the second largest weekly move in the forex market and the largest among the five big private lenders.

The crossing came on Thursday, July 23, when the Bank went from 159.96 Br to 160.01 Br, adding 0.08 Br in two steps after that.

Zemen Bank, the only other member of the big five in the market's upper tier, ended at 161.13 Br after rising 0.25 Br. Dashen Bank added 0.28 Br to reach 159.58 Br. Awash Bank added 0.24 Br to reach 159.61 Br, while Wegagen Bank posted 159.8 Br on Monday and 159.8 Br on Saturday, and every figure in between matched to the fourth decimal place.

The bigger change was beyond the big-five.

Oromia Bank, the market's price leader for months, has been overtaken. Abay Bank opened the week at 162.57 Br against Oromia Bank's 162.73 Br and closed at 162.89 Br, 0.16 Br clear of a rival that did not move its rate once in six days. The crossover came on Thursday and has widened daily since.

Abay also held the highest offer in the market at 166.15 Br, ahead of Oromia Bank at 165.99 Br and Bunna Bank at 165.96 Br. Bunna, third in the premium tier, gained 0.31 Br to 162.7 Br, tracking Abay rather than Oromia Bank.

Tsehay Bank bid 158.49 Br and offered 161.66 Br on each of the six days, the lowest on both sides of the commercial market. The state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), which held the largest share of the country's deposits and remittance flows, was frozen at 158.83 Br buying and 162 Br selling from Monday.

Between Tsehay Bank's bid and Abay Bank's, 4.40 Br separates the cheapest and dearest dollar in one market on one day. That dispersion of 2.8pc widened over the week from 4.24 Br.

Two years into a forex regime meant to unify exchange rates, the gap between banks is wider than it has been for most of the month. That CBE and Tsehay Bank held a bid more than a Birr below the market average without losing flow says something about how foreign exchange is actually bought.

Posted rates are not the full price. CBE, like several competitors, offers a top-up bonus on every dollar it buys, paid outside the published rate and hence invisible in the forex boards. The published number appears more of a compliance artefact, with the effective number negotiated.

A premium tier of five - Abay, Oromia, Bunna, Zemen and Hibret banks - bid between 0.78pc and 1.93pc above the Central Bank's indicative rate and accounted for almost all the market's dispersion. A shadowing cluster of seven - Amhara, Berhan, Enat, Gadaa, Goh Betoch, Siket and Wegagen - sat within five cents of the Central Bank's 159.81 Br, close enough that its figure was the input to their pricing, not the output.

A third group grinds, revising daily in steps of half a cent to five cents, among them Awash, Dashen, Coop, Siinqee, Enat and Abyssinia banks. A passive block of nine (Amhara, CBE, Global, Goh Betoch, Hijra, Nib, Oromia, Tsehay and Wegagen) did not change a decimal place last week.

Abay Bank's week reads 162.57, 162.67, 162.68, 162.78, 162.79 and 162.89, an alternating ladder of exactly 10 cents and exactly one cent, repeated three times. Siinqee Bank moved its bid by exactly 0.0005 Br on each of three consecutive days, then jumped 0.16 Br on Saturday.

The state policy bank, the Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE), repriced once, to 159.9 Br on Tuesday, and has not moved since.

The one real outlier was Anbessa Bank, which cut its bid from 160.8 Br to 159.7 Br on Friday, a fall of 0.69pc. It was the only downward revision anywhere in the market across the six days.

Anbessa Bank had been in the premium tier every day since Monday and abruptly rejoined the pack, giving up a position held while paying up for dollars. Whether that reflected a repricing after losses on the bid, a correction of a bad posting, or a change in funding was not clear.

The Central Bank's own line was unsteady to a lesser extent. Its indicative rate ran 159.59 Br on Monday and 159.99 Br on Tuesday, close enough to a round 160 to raise the question of whether it was calculated or chosen. It fell back to 159.79 Br on Wednesday and settled at 159.81 Br on Friday and Saturday.

That final figure sat 1.32 Br above Tsehay Bank's floor and 0.18 Br below its own Tuesday print. It stood still while 14 commercial banks were still revising on Saturday.

Last week established a market drifting weaker at a controlled pace, priced by imitation in the absence of an auction, and split into tiers whose gaps were widening rather than closing. The August and September sales will likely test whether the volumes announced are large enough to pull the premium tier.

PUBLISHED ON Jul 25,2026 [ VOL 27 , NO 1369]