Financial Liberalization and Bank Performance in Ethiopia

The aim of the study is to assess the impact of financial liberalization on the ownership structure, market concentration and profitability performance of the Ethiopian banking industry. The study found out that the reform has brought a lot of remarkable changes on the structure and performance of the banking sector as compared with the situations prevalent before the reform period. However, as tested by both two firm concentration ratio and HHI using total deposits, loans, capital and assets, the banking industry in Ethiopia can still be distinguished by its market concentration towards the big government owned commercial banks and by a market characterized by little and insufficient competition.