After two years of heading the policy bank, Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE), Getahun Nana, former vice-governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), submitted his resignation letter mid this week to the Prime Minister Office.
According to sources, Getahun seemed ready and intending to leave his coveted post at the DBE where he had replaced Esayas Bahre, who left in 2016 after being suspended from his post.
Meanwhile, experts in the finance sector speculate that Getahun may be headed for the NBE governor’s post.
Getahun, before joining DBE, was one of the longest serving financial sector watchdogs at the central bank and served as a vice governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) for seven years. Later he was appointed by the then Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn to revive DBE.
At DBE, the levels of Non-Performing Loans (NPL) has declined from 28 percent to 20.54 percent in the current fiscal year. From the total NPL basket, the majority is accounted for by two sectors: manufacturing and commercial farming. As of January, 2018, DBE’s NPL level is 8.6 billion birr. Still the NPL of the bank remained above the 15 percent maximum cap set by the National Bank of Ethiopia.
DBE is a specialized state owned development financial institution, which is supervised by the Public Financial Enterprises Agency.
The Development Bank of Ethiopia was the first development finance institution in Ethiopia and as such it was designed to assist in the development of industrial and agricultural production and foster the investment of private capital for productive purposes
The goal of this bank is to promote economic development via financing commerce, industry, agriculture, and manufacturing. Each period of Ethiopian political history has used the bank for different purposes. Thus, the bank has changed its name several times.
The removal of Esayas, which was at the time largely related with a controversial finding by a study conducted in the Office of the Prime Minister that exposed the misuse of loans disbursed to commercial farms, particularly in Gambella Region among others has put the bank in a limelight.