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

Mar 21 , 2026.

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 153.64 Br to the dollar on March 16, 2026, to 153.74 Br on March 21, while the average selling rate edged up from 156.61 Br to 156.71 Br. This amounted to a depreciation of roughly 0.07pc over the week on both sides. The sharpest daily increase came on March 19, when the average buying rate increased by 0.05 Br and the average selling rate by roughly the same amount. On March 20, not one bank changed its posted rate. The broad message was “controlled slippage.”

Even more striking than the rise in the average was the market’s segmentation. At one end sat the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), which by March 21 had become the most aggressive buyer, posting buying and selling rates of 157.10 Br. At the other end sat Global Bank, unchanged through the six days of the week at 152.63 Br on the buying side and 155.69 Br on the selling side. That left a 4.47 Br gap between the highest and lowest buying quotes on Saturday.

Oromia Bank remained the most expensive place to buy dollars, holding the highest selling rate every day and ending at 160.14 Br on Saturday. It was split into a premium-buying pole at the Central Bank and a premium-selling pole at Oromia Bank.

Last week's overall average quote across all banks was 153.70 Br on the buying side and 156.67 Br on the selling side.

However, these figures hide how tightly most banks were grouped. By March 21, 24 of the 30 financial institutions were quoting buying rates between 153 Br and 153.83 Br. On the selling side, 23 banks were packed into a narrow corridor between 156.07 Br and 156.90 Br. For most of the market, the quote board had become formulaic, with small upward moves, near-identical spreads and little daylight between one bank and the next. The visible dispersion was created mainly by a few outliers, in particular the Central Bank and Oromia Bank at the top and Global Bank at the bottom.

The big private five moved broadly in parallel over the week, but by Saturday, there was a clear split within that group.

Wegagen and Zemen broke ranks, offering 154.59 Br and 154.60 Br, respectively, on the buying side, while Abyssinia posted 153.75 Br, Awash at 153.29 Br and Dashen at 153.07 Br. Even so, the weekly adjustments remained small. Over the week, Wegagen Bank added 0.03 Br and Zemen almost 0.03 Br from March 16 to March 21; Awash and Dashen added about 0.02 Br; Abyssinia adjusted by 0.02 Br. Taken together with the note that all five adjusted their buying rate by about 0.03 Br from the previous week, the pattern revealed a market in which peer banks still watch each other closely, but no longer sit on the same rung of the ladder. Wegagen and Zemen have chosen a higher ledge.

The state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) remained subdued. Its buying rate on March 21 was 153.01 Br, up only 0.01 Br from the start of the week and still the third-lowest. That left it 0.73 Br below the industry average and nearly four Birr beneath the Central Bank’s quote. Even allowing for promotional top-ups outside the sticker rate, the headline posting matters because it signals intent. By that standard, CBE looked defensive rather than aggressive.

The Central Bank's behaviour was the clearest anomaly of the forex market. It posted a zero spread every day, moving from 156.65 Br on March 17 to 157.10 Br by March 19 and then holding steady through March 21. On the buying side, it dominated the market throughout the week. On the selling side, however, its zero spread left it below Oromia, Zemen and Wegagen banks by Saturday, even though it was the most aggressive buyer. The Central Bank’s quote worked less as a market-clearing price than as an administrative beacon.

Since July 2024, the Central Bank, trying to supply banks with hard currency and to steer price discovery in the new market, has begun a series of auctions that reads like a running ledger of pressure in the Birr market. The first special auction, on August 7, 2024, disclosed only a clearing rate of 107.9 Br to the dollar, not the amount sold. From there, however, the amounts became visible. In less than two years, the auction system provided two billion dollars.

Oromia Bank was the other clear outlier. It remained second only to the Central Bank on the buying side and first on the selling side every day of the week. Its buying rate climbed from 156.32 Br to 156.99 Br, the largest increase among banks, while its selling rate jumped from 159.44 Br to 160.14 Br, surpassing 160 Br.

Global Bank posted the lowest buying and selling rates every day and did not move at all during the week. CBE, Dashen, Sinqee and Ahadu banks stayed above them. Nine banks, such as Berhan, Goh Betoch, Nib and Hijira, did not alter their published buying or selling rates between March 16 and March 21.

The headline average masked a widening gap in behaviour between banks that are merely present in the market and banks that are trying to shape it. The forex market was categorised between the policy and premium outliers, represented by the Central Bank and Oromia Bank. Then come the upper-tier private banks, especially Wegagen and Zemen. The dense middle is where most banks post similar rates and keep the now-standard two percent spread. The last were the passive laggards, led by Global Bank.

The deeper relevance is that the Brewed Buck did weaken over the week, but the more important development was structural rather than directional. The market no longer looks like a single field of comparable quotes. It looked like a tiered system. Most banks remain tightly bunched, changing price only in tiny increments and largely keeping an almost uniform spread. Above them sit a few financial institutions willing, or able, to push materially higher.

PUBLISHED ON Mar 21,2026 [ VOL 26 , NO 1351]