About the AUD/BIF rate
The AUD/BIF rate is how many BIF one Australian dollar buys. It moves constantly with interest-rate expectations, commodity prices and global risk sentiment - see what moves the rate. Tradergy shows the mid-market reference rate and does not forecast where it’s heading. For the 52-week highs and lows and a daily table, see the AUD/BIF rate history.
Reading the same rate from the other side: the reverse rate, BIF → AUD, is on the receiving Burundian franc view, and sending Australian dollars to Burundi is covered on the AUD → BIF transfer page. Every AUD pair sits on the convert hub, and to work in more than one currency at once there is the currency converter.
Why one franc has two prices
The International Monetary Fund's July 2023 country report on Burundi recorded the parallel market premium at 102 per cent in mid-April 2023, up from 71 per cent at the end of the previous January and from something close to 60 per cent at the 2022 Article IV baseline. That figure is the distance between the rate the authorities publish and the rate at which francs actually change hands, and the Fund has published a number for it in successive reports.
The Fund attributes part of the widening to Burundi itself. The Fund attributed the 2023 surge in part to the unintended effects of temporary measures the central bank had taken to limit cash circulation, which weakened confidence in the domestic currency and triggered a run towards hard currency. Foreign exchange at the official rate had by then been allocated for fuel and little else.
Burundi has been dismantling the arrangement in visible steps since late 2022, and the Fund logged each one. Remittances became withdrawable in foreign currency in October 2022. Private exchange bureaus were permitted to apply for licences and reopen from the end of that month, and 22 were operating by April 2023. Permission for those bureaus to trade at freely determined rates arrived in January 2023 and was subsequently revoked. An interbank foreign exchange market became operational on 4 May 2023.
The reform has a name and a deadline attached. In July 2023 the International Monetary Fund's Executive Board approved a 38-month arrangement for Burundi worth about 271 million United States dollars, listing unification of the official and parallel markets among its four pillars. Progress has been real and slow: staff reported after the 2026 Article IV mission that the premium had declined but remained high, at 100 per cent at the end of April 2026, and that the authorities had adopted a macroeconomic stabilisation plan in January of that year.
Sources: International Monetary Fund, Burundi: Request for a 38-Month Arrangement Under the Extended Credit Facility, Country Report No. 23/270, July 2023 · International Monetary Fund, IMF Executive Board Approves a US$271 million 38-month Arrangement Under the Extended Credit Facility for Burundi, Press Release No. 23/266, 17 July 2023 · International Monetary Fund, IMF Staff Completes 2026 Article IV Mission to Burundi, 18 May 2026