Case closed!

A month after the demonetization moves of the Abiy Ahmed (PhD) administration came into effect, a major phase came to an end yesterday as the time span for changing old notes with new ones ran out for amounts ranging from 100,000 birr to 1.5 million birr. The Minister of Defense (left), Kene’a Yadeta, reported that the process was generally successful, with the apprehension of a counterfeit money printing machine coming as a major threat to the process. Minister of Finance (center), Ahmed Shide, pointed out that the next step is disseminating the new notes to the rural community. Governor of the National Bank (right), Yinager Dessie (PhD), disclosed that a total of 31 billion birr has been deposited in the 920 thousand new bank accounts created. He further stated that over 94 billion birr of the new currency has been distributed through banking outlets, while more than 74 billion birr of the old note has been collected.