Close to 1.66 billion dollars is needed to help 7.88 million Ethiopians affected by man-made and natural disasters for the rest of 2018, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) said on Wednesday.
According to the latest figures from UNOCHA, the money is needed to assist 7.88 million people with food or cash and to implement life and livelihood-saving interventions in other non-food sectors.
UNOCHA said the Gedeo-West Guji conflict Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) alone needed 117.7 million dollars for a period of six months to meet their food and non-food basic needs.
Conflict between ethnic Gedeos living in Southern regional state and ethnic Guji Oromos living in the neighbouring West Gji zone, Oromia regional state, had intensified since June, leaving more than one million people displaced, figures from UNICEF earlier this month revealed.
UNOCHA said that another 500,000 people displaced by climatic shocks also needed assistance in urgent food and non-food basic necessities.
It said most of the rest of 7.88 million Ethiopians needing urgent food aid were those affected by drought conditions.
Meanwhile, Ethiopian Police said on Wednesday that it had arrested 40 people as part of the crackdown on informal foreign currency exchange.
Abebe Degafu, Deputy Director, Financial Crimes Investigation Bureau, Ethiopia Federal Police Commission, said the crackdown happening in various sites in Addis Ababa on informal foreign currency exchangers had so far netted tens of thousands of illicit dollars and British pound notes.
He said that the crackdown started on Tuesday and would continue through this week in a bid to control illicit foreign currencies circulating in Addis Ababa and other major Ethiopian cities.
Ethiopia is currently facing a major foreign currency crunch as spiraling public expenditure, disappointing export revenues and political instability are allegedly causing business and ordinary people to hoard on foreign currencies.
In June, Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, said that his government was willing to give amnesty to those holding illicit foreign currency provided they exchanged the foreign money at local banks.
After his announcement, local banks saw a spike in foreign cash being exchanged and the gap between the official rate and informal market for Ethiopian birr versus foreign currencies significantly narrowed.
However, the respite has largely ended in recent weeks with one dollar being exchanged up to 36 Ethiopian birr in the informal market while the official exchange rate stands at one dollar for 27.47 birr.
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