With the aim of realizing nation’s goal to become amongst middle income countries, the Chemical and Construction Inputs Development Institute has been putting efforts.
Identifying market destinations as well as building the capacity of investors was also amongst the areas where the Institute has given special attention to increase sector`s contribution to the economy.
According to the Institute’s General Director Samuel Halala, various activities are being carried out to expand investment in chemical and construction sector.
Apart from that, the Institute joining force with various higher education institutions such as Hawassa, Debre Birhan and Bahir Dar universities conducts different researches that can be inputs for industries as well as investors.
Since the heavy chemicals and other hazardous materials produced or released from the industries might put the environment at risk, the Institute is working on ways establishing environment friendly industries as well as providing base line information to evaluate carbon emission.
Samuel said that with the intention of making the chemical industries competitive internationally, the Institute is working to standardized and offer quality certification to industries based on the set criteria.
During the ended budget year, the Chemical and Construction sector has created jobs for more than 10,134 citizens. Along with this, it has provided internship and externship services for about 847 students and eight teachers respectively.
Despite the fact that there are various constraints in the sector, shortage of foreign currency, power interruption, limitation in provision of finance to sector’s actors were mentioned sector’s major challenges in the last budget year.
Though the Institute intended to increase industries’ performance and earn about 38.225 million USD from Industrial products, it was only enabled to accomplish 18.45 million USD. Likewise, the plan to increase the general price of industrial products (GVP) to 22.32 billion Birr, only 18.17 billion Birr was attained which is 81.4 percent of the plan.
As part of enhancing the economic contribution of the sector, it was planned to obtain 12.01 billion Birr though the performance was 8.9 billion Birr which is 74.1 percent of the plan.
Similarly, even if it is aimed to raise the performance of industry’s production growth to 22 percent, it was gained 18.04 percent.
Furthermore, the Institute has set plan to enable industries recycle materials, export Hydrogen peroxide, Sulfuric-acid as well as other chemicals in this budget year, as to him.
Producing basic chemical inputs for heavy chemical industries is amongst the priority areas to be executed in this year, said the Director.
Moreover, it has planned to further strengthen and work on industry-university linkages, develop ICT technology strategies and roadmap, set standards for sector’s industries, evaluate quality plus offer certificates and increase product and productivity of the sector.
The Ethiopian Herald October 16, 2019
BY BETELHEM BEDLU
