ADDIS ABABA – Trade and Deve-lopment report 2019 by UNCTAD affirmed that Ethiopia is on the right track to meet Agenda 2030.
The report urged countries to relay on commodity reduction and engaging in manufacturing and digital technologies. According to the report, Ethiopia is one of the countries working more on environmental protection, green development and manufacturing sector in assisting the realization of the agenda.
Launching the report yesterday Mukhisa Kituyi, UNCTAD’s Secretary General said “Meeting the financing demands of the Agenda 2030 requires rebuilding multilateralism around the idea of a Global Green New Deal, and by implication a financial future very different from the recent past.”
Additionally, political will to change rules of the international economic game and adopting policies that scale up the resources needed for a big investment push led by the public sector and set the global economy on an expansionary course is needed to meet the goals.
According to Tefera Tesfachew (PhD), Principal Advisor at the Ethiopian Investment Commission, Ethiopia is in a good range in engaging itself into industrialization.
Among the total FDI revenue of 3.3 Billion USD by the year 2018, 70 percent of it was earned from manufacturing while the rest was from agriculture, commodity and other, he stated adding that Hawassa Industrial Park, the first African Industrial park with zero discharge through recycling is the other manifestations of the progress.
Coupled with helping late comers in industrialization process, developing countries would have to grow at an average annual rate of 11.9 percent per year in order to achieve the SDGs, said Rashmi Banga, UNCTAD Senior Economic Affairs Officer. She also avowed that taxing the digital economy and global coordination are also needed for meeting the goals.
The Ethiopian Herald September 26, 2019
BY HIZKEL HAILU
