With the aim of fighting tax avoidance and illegal circulation of money, the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) today introduced a directive that limits cash withdrawal from banks.
As of today an individual bank user cannot be allowed to withdraw more than 200,000 birr (about $5,900) per day and not more than one million birr (about $29,500) within a month, according to Yinager Dessie, Governor of NBE, which regulates financial institutions in Ethiopia. The directive also stated that a corporate bank client (an institution) is not allowed to withdraw more than 300,000 birr (about $8,850) per day and not more than 2.5 million birr (about $73,746) within one month period of time.
The directive allows bank presidents to make exceptions under certain circumstances and report such above the limit payments to NBE weekly. The directive also stated that one can move more than the limited amount from one account to another, as well as make payments using check and CPO.
Any bank or microfinance institution in Ethiopia, which violates the directive will be fined 25 percent of the amount it has paid as penalty.