CBE Preps 1.09 Trillion Birr in Loans for New Budget Year, a 68.7 Percent Jump from last year.

Commercial Bank of Ethiopia has set aside 1,092,990,000,000 Birr for lending in the 2026/27 budget year. That figure alone equals close to 57 percent of the 1.93 trillion Birr national budget Ethiopia's Ministry of Finance released for the current fiscal year — one state-owned bank committing a sum nearly as large as the government's entire annual spending plan.

CBE by early 2025 the bank held a 50.4 percent share of total banking sector assets and 51.7 percent of the industry's loan portfolio, and its total loan book had already climbed to 1.39 trillion Birr. Assets kept climbing from there: CBE's total assets reached 2.87 trillion Birr by the third quarter of the 2025/26 fiscal year. A trillion-plus loan commitment from this institution moves the entire national credit market, not just its own balance sheet.

President Abe Sano disclosed the new lending target at the bank's annual performance briefing. He said the borrower base has grown to more than 1.17 million people, a figure that shows the expanded loan accessibility, including through its digital lending channels.

That digital push is not new — CBE had already issued 3.9 billion Birr in digital loans to 717,000 customers by February 2025, so the borrower count has grown by roughly 450,000 in under a year and a half. The 68.7 percent jump in the lending pool implies last year's prepared loan target sat near 648 billion Birr, meaning CBE is not just growing its lending — it is nearly doubling its own pace of growth from one budget year to the next.

Historically, most of that money has moved toward private enterprise: 88.2 percent of CBE's disbursements in early 2025 went to private borrowers rather than state enterprises. Abe closed the briefing by calling on the public to take up the new credit lines.

If CBE holds that pace, Ethiopia's credit market enters the new budget year carrying more fuel than it has ever had at once — and over a million borrowers, new and returning, about to find out what a trillion Birr can build.