ADDIS ABABA– Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy announced that the government is planning to increase the number of irrigation projects aiming at alleviating food insecurity.
Ethiopia spent about 710 million USD in the last fiscal year to import wheat and the irrigation projects are meant to replace import with domestic productions, Eng. Sileshi Bekele, Ministry of Water and Irrigation told a press conference yesterday.
“More irrigation projects have been designed to scale up mechanized agriculture as the country needs to alleviate shortage of agricultural products like wheat”, he said.
To him, these projects are helpful to realize the country’s plan to substitute wheat import by 2021.
The projects are run with cooperation of Ministry of Agriculture, he said., indicating that they are planned on rivers of Awash, Wabishebelle, Gibe, Omo as well as Tana Beles, he mentioned.
This year, around 32,000 hectare of land with an estimated yield of two million quintal is being cultivated with wheat.
Also, the ministry is planning to expand irrigation projects with four projects already been implemented, he said adding that the design and the cost analysis documents of additional six projects is also on pipeline, he noted.
Furthermore, the ministry also plans to preparer the design of additional 13 additional irrigation projects this budget year. Ethiopia imports about 17 million quintal of wheat annually.
The Ethiopian Herald September 20/2019
BY YESUF ENDRIS
