ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia has imported 14 million litres of cooking oil to ensure sufficient supplies of the basic commodity, its trade minister said, after the country’s central bank floated the national currency last week to help secure international support.
The Ethiopian birr slipped against the dollar last week after the National Bank of Ethiopia adopted a market-determined foreign exchange rate to secure a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending programme and to make progress on a long-delayed debt restructuring.
It clinched an IMF deal worth $3.4 billion and funding from other creditors including the World Bank shortly after.
On Monday, the birr was down 40% against the dollar to trade at 95.69 per greenback, the country’s biggest lender Commercial Bank of Ethiopia said, while at some private banks one dollar was being traded for more than 100 birr.
Traders in the capital Addis Ababa said the price of cooking oil had gone up by around 25% following the central bank’s move.
Kassahun Gofe, Ethiopia’s minister for Trade and Regional Integration, said on Sunday that businesses which increase prices on basic goods would face temporary closure or see their licenses revoked.
The ministry closed more than 2,000 stores for “unjustified price hikes and hoarding” after the new exchange rate policy was put in place, it said on Saturday.
(Reporting by Dawit Endeshaw; Editing by Bhargav Acharya and David Holmes)
