National Bank of Ethiopia Concludes Special FX Auction with a Weighted Average Rate of Birr 107.9 per USD
The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) announced the results of the Special Foreign Exchange Auction held today, revealing a weighted average rate of Birr 107.9 per US Dollar.
The auction saw participation from 27 banks, and the weighted average rate of all successful bids was Birr 107.9 per USD. As per NBE’s daily practice of updating exchange rates based on FX market activity in the banking system, transactions conducted under today’s auction will be reflected in the Indicative Daily Exchange Rate posted tomorrow, August 8, 2024.
NBE Governor Mamo Mihretu commented on the auction results: “We are pleased to see a substantial narrowing of the gap between bank exchange rates and parallel market rates over the past week, as well as meaningful progress towards exchange rate stability. This is precisely what our macroeconomic reforms intended to achieve—namely, to ensure that most FX transaction activity can shift to the banking system, thereby helping both the exporters bringing in foreign exchange as well as the many companies and entrepreneurs seeking foreign exchange.”
The Governor also highlighted the encouraging growth in the volume of FX transactions: “We are also pleased to see a growing number of banks making foreign exchange available to their customers by approving past import requests and accepting new import requests; we anticipate and indeed expect more banks will follow this trend over the coming weeks and that they will do so with increasingly larger FX volumes.”
