Six Banks Caused 93 Percent of Last Week's Birr Move

The birr weakened slightly against the dollar last week across the boards of 29 banks. The average buying rate moved from 161.88 Br to 162.02 Br and the average selling rate from 165.11 Br to 165.26 Br, both up about 0.09 percent.

On a thousand dollars, the week's move was worth 147.10 Br.

The average is hiding most of what happened

Eighteen banks finished the week higher and eleven left both rates unchanged. But the distribution inside that is lopsided: six banks raised their buying rates by more than 0.10 Br, and those six accounted for 93.3 percent of the average increase. The other twenty-three averaged a rise of 0.01 Br — which is to say, nothing.

So the headline depreciation is not a market-wide repricing. It is six institutions moving, and the average being dragged along behind them.

That is worth knowing if you read the weekly number as a signal. A broad move across twenty-nine boards would say something about dollar supply. A move concentrated in six says something about six banks' own positions — their foreign exchange inflows, their client pipeline, or their appetite to bid for deposits in dollars.

Where the real money is

The number that matters most to a business is not the 0.09 percent. It is the gap.

The spread between the highest and lowest bank buying the same thousand dollars was nearly 4,500 Br. Set that against the week's total average move of 147.10 Br: the cost of picking the wrong bank is roughly thirty times the cost of the week's depreciation.

An exporter converting a hundred thousand dollars is leaving around 450,000 Br on the table by not shopping the boards. That is the actionable fact in a weekly forex report, and it has been true for months.

Open

The report does not identify which six banks drove the move, or why. Nor does it say whether the wide inter-bank spread reflects genuinely different foreign exchange positions or simply different willingness to pass the market rate to customers.

Sources: Addis Fortune, 26 October 2026