Ethiopia’s textile and garment industry witnessing rapid growth, as a number of domestic and multinational firms are being engaged in the production of textile and apparel for domestic and global markets. In the path to industrialize Ethiopia, the sector is given prominent position in boosting export, creating job opportunities, and as a model to other sectors as well.
According to policy and strategy the sector has become a top priority for Ethiopia as part of its goal to become a middle-income country by 2025. The key objective is to make the sector globally competitive and to bring the necessary structural transformation to the nation’s economy to export industrial outputs, create thousands of jobs, attract much-needed foreign currency and above all, contribute to poverty reduction.
Although Ethiopia is a recommended market for investment in textiles, there are still a lot of challenges that the country and investors are facing.
One of these challenges is the efficiency in factories which is as slow as 40 to 45 percent in production both in textile or garment assembly units. This problem is mainly due to underdeveloped processes and lack of education amongst manpower.
Besides, low quality of products, delay in land provision, electric power and water supply, and inadequate amount of loan and foreign currency that is spent to buy raw materials and machinery are among the bottlenecks to the sector.
Hence, the textile industry in Ethiopia has much room for development. This can be achieved with the help of the government and its vision.
Cognizant to the challenges, government has given emphasis to the sector recently; so that it identified the bottlenecks and set solutions. As a result, advancements have begun to be seen. The plan to gain 240.3 million USD during the past fiscal year was achieved 63 percent by gaining 153.5 million USD. Comparing this with the previous year’s performance, it has increment of 47 million Dollars which shows 40.8 percent growth.
In line with the aforementioned challenges, lagging in integrating the industry with technology has delayed its expected progress. This showcases various efforts underway to bridge the gap. Among these is conducting various exhibitions that contribute for the growth of the sector.
Ethiopian Chamber Of Commerce and Sectoral Associations along with Indian Textile Machinery Exhibition Association have announced recently about textile and machinery exhibition to be held in Addis Ababa.
The exhibition, as to the organizers, will be held on February 14-16, 2020 at Millennium Hall under the motto “Africa, enriched in the textile technology” and on the occasion, more than 220 companies will participate from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and America. It is also learnt that seminars on business, technical, investment and banking institutes will be conducted on the exhibition.
While explaining about the exhibition, Harry Shankar, head of Indian International Textile Machinery Exhibition Association said that the exhibition has multifaceted importance in applying new technologies and procedures that upgrade product and productivity of the sector; capacitating stakeholders by identifying their technological gap; facilitating platforms to communicate them with global partners and above all, in simplifying challenges that put obstacle against the sector’s development.
For his part, Engineer Melaku Ezezew, President of Ethiopian Chamber Of Commerce and Sectoral Association said that the textile industry is the key to the country’s economic transformation and the technology is the right way to achieve the goal.
He further stressed that conducting technology exhibition that helps the industry’s development highly contributes in creating market ties with different countries’ companies in addition to introducing Ethiopia’s investment options to foreign investors and technology transfer.
Sileshi Lemma, Director for the Ethiopian Textile Industry Development Institute (ETIDI), for his part, said that backing the textile industry with technology is immensely decisive for the sector’s product and productivity.
In accordance with the great advancement of the global textile industry, reinforcing oneself to be competent is vital, as to Sileshi and consolidating the sector with technology is the key factor to penetrate world market.
The director farther explained that exhibitions and bazars conducted in such a way are significantly important in facilitating trade partnership in line with assimilating the sector with technology. Such kind of exhibition is a big opportunity for Ethiopia as it comes in the time when the country has planned to become Africa’s textile industry hub.
Teka Gebreyesus, State Minister for the Ministry of Trade and Industry, for his part said that the government is working with emphasis by designing policies and strategies aiming to assure sustainable development of the industry.
Like other sectors, the government is applying various incentives like creating conducive platform and providing high service and support to lure developmental investors aiming at advancing their human resource and technological capacity to encourage them to invest on the textile industry sector. In addition to tax relief for investors engaged in the sector, the government is applying various activities such as accessible infrastructure that positively contribute to the sector’s growth, he noted.
“In the early years, many who were engaged in the textile industry have passed through abundance of ups and downs and even some got stuck and fell,” said Teka. “But now, government is working being alert to identify problems the sector encounter and leaving former ups and downs for history,” he elaborated.
Regardless of such efforts, the way for the sector as all accept unanimously is not bed of rose yet; so that the partakers are making rigorous struggle to uplift the sector’s product and productivity and to penetrate global market. If these diligent investors are supported properly, Teka stressed that they will score better achievement.
The state minister pointed out that linking the sector with technology is crucial to its overall growth and at the moment technology is not optional rather it is mandatory. Any business which lacks technological support will not sustain as operational as it is so that mixing up with the modern technology cannot be postponed for tomorrow, he underscored.
The Ethiopian Herald September 17, 2019
BY BACHA ZEWDIE
