product quality infrastructure guarantees manufacturing industries’ competitiveness in the international market, not to mention its role in ensuring sustainability of businesses. Despite the availability of such infrastructure in our country, backlog of works are still ahead of the government and other stakeholders.
The development aspiration of and the potential for industrialization the country avails show that the infrastructure ought to be expanded sooner than later. It was in view of this that the country has been implementing a five-year project worth USD 50 million since 2015, aiming to enhance the quality infrastructure of the country.
It is also deemed to increase the private sector’s participation and to ensure sound administration and regulatory systems. The project championed in pushing the product and services quality to higher level by helping the National Quality Infrastructure to be internationally acceptable.
It has as well been said to have improved the human capital as well as the use of state-of-the-art technology. As the country’s industrialization appetite is increasing than ever, the significance of quality products and services and the ensuing competitiveness goes without saying, said Quality Infrastructure Project Coordinator with the Ministry of Industry Wondoson Fiseha.
“It tackles bottlenecks relating to quality and well position the country to be better competitive.” Textile, leather and leather products as well as agriculture are among the sectors the project includes. It has also taken into consideration the capacity of quality infrastructure and the demands of industrialists. Beneficiaries include quality infrastructure entities, regulatory bodies and exporters, according to him.
Mentioning that over 15 months have lapsed since the commencement of the project, he added that Ethiopian Standard Agency, Ethiopian National Accreditation Office, National Metrology Agency and Ethiopian Conformity Assessment Enterprise have built their capacities in terms of human resource and laboratory equipment in addition to emulating international experiences. The quality infrastructure project mainly reinforces the national exportled strategy, according to Senior Expert with UN Ethiopia Sinidu Fanuel.
“It focuses on making the country’s products internationally competitive.” It is clear that lots of supports have been offered to the private sector. The country also suffers from the outflow of currencies to export products. However, the products’competitiveness has been far from meeting expectations. Hence, the project is of paramount significance. To her, resource wise, it is not feasible to cover all products. But the county has attached due attention on the three products and that is the reason the project as well placed much weight on them.
When the project sees completion, quality infrastructure of the existing institutions will be in a better status. Human resource and equipment of the institutions will also come to the desired level. Products quality and buyers expectations will come at a confluence. The project has also no less significance in ensuring better practices in areas like standardization, metrology, accreditation, and conformity assessment services, inspection, testing and certification.
Trade and Industry Minister Fetlework Gebreegziabher for her part admits that the Quality Infrastructure Services at lower level does not match with the current economic development of the country. Hence, the government has been endeavoring to reinvigorate quality issue through strengthening the National Quality Infrastructure, she added.
She also cited the World Bank’s support as an indication to government’s efforts. Most quality check equipment is procured at higher cost. Thus, World Bank’s financial support has helped us a lot, she added. Mentioning the importance of the timely conclusion of the project, she said the second phase would continue at the heels of the conclusion of the current one. All sort of efforts will also be applied to ensure the effectiveness of the project, she concludes.
Herald January 4/2019
TRANSLATED BY WORKU BELACHEW
