Commercial Bank of Ethiopia’s (CBE) current asset reached a total of 242 Billion Birr. The Bank attributed this achievement to the consolidated effort it exerted in the past ten consecutive years.

The Bank’s Communication Manager, Ephrem Mekuria, furthered the reasons for the achievement includes provision of modern services and awareness creation of saving program.

As part of the Bank’s five years Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP), Ephrem explained, it aimed to bring total saving to 257 Billion Birr and it currently stands at 192 Billion Birr.

Accordgn to him, five years ago the nation’s saving amounted only 5 percent but this has now raised to 22 percent, surpassing the GTP 18 percent target.

Saving plays a pivotal role in a nation’s trade and investment to record a fair and rapid national economy growth.

Aiming to encourage saving habits of the young as well as women, CBE launched a new scheme of special saving plan which gives these sect of the society a 5.25 percent interest rate; which is 0.25 percent higher than the regular saving interest rate.

CBE has also diversified its services by owning 439 ATM machines, 164 thousand mobile banking and 290 thousand internet banking in addition to the core banking system in 658 branches, Ephrem explained.

He furthered currently there are 50 FOREX ATM machines installed for the Bank’s customers to get access to exchange of UK Pounds, Euro and US Dollars in the current exchange rate.

Source: Walta Information Center