Getahun Nana appointed President Development Bank of Ethiopia
Getahun Nana, vice-governor and director of bank supervision division at the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), has been appointed to lead the Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE), a policy-lender bank which has financed major investment projects in Ethiopia worth billions of birr over the years.
Gethanu has served at the central bank for over 20 years where he has come to amass detailed and intimate knowledge about private commercial banks in Ethiopia, sources said. Over the years, Getahun has overseen the application of some of the most “stringent” banking regulations in the industry and so far he has not entertained a major incident in the industry under his watch.
In fact, banking is perhaps one of the few very successful private sector dominated industries in Ethiopia and Getahun was at the top of the supervisory division all the time.
Getahun replaced another long-serving banker in Ethiopia, Esayas Bahire, for the top job at DBE. Esayas has led the policy lender bank for close to eight years up until his removal from his position following a letter written by the supervisory agency earlier last week.
Esayas, on his part, has a cumulative experience of over 30 years in the banking industry in Ethiopia.
The letter written by Sintayehu Gebremichael (PhD), head of the Financial Enterprises Supervisory Agency, offered little by way of explanation as to why Esayas was removed but noted that the decision is effective immediately.
Esayas, however, said that he has no information as to what were the reasons behind his dismissal from the presidency but said: “If it is to bring fresh leadership and energy to the bank, I don’t object to my removal.”
According to sources, Esayas’s dismissal came after a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn one week before his removal, which discussed the success and failure of commercial agriculture in Ethiopia in the past five years.
Sources also said that the bank has recently stopped advancing a new credit line to agricultural projects in Ethiopia which Esayas claims to be a decision that was taken following the government’s move to discontinue the provision of new farmland to commercial farms in Ethiopia. He also argued that if there is at all any fault it could not be the bank’s.
The same sources also claimed that the meeting ended with a disagreement as to who should take the responsibility for the colossal failure in commercial agriculture in Ethiopia.
