According to World Trade Organization (WTO), facilitating trade enhances countries’ competitiveness by allowing timely goods and services delivery with reasonable transaction costs.
It can also provide important opportunities to promote open trade in so doing can contribute a lot to economic growth and poverty reduction.
With this same purpose, Ethiopia has been devising various mechanisms so as to ease doing business in the nation.
Ethiopia is ranked 159 among 190 economies in the ease of doing business, according to the latest World Bank annual ratings. The rank improved to 159 in 2018 from 161 in 2017. Ease of Doing Business in Ethiopia averaged 133.45 from 2008 until 2018, reaching an all time high of 161 in 2017 and a record low of 104 in 2010. Currently, various activities are carried out to place the country amongst the top 100 lists in recent years.
At the Trade enhancement and facilitation work shop organized by Ministry of Trade and Industry recently, State Minister of Trade and Industry H.E Ambassador Misganu Arga said that Ethiopia is accelerating economic reform with the grand objective of achieving sustainable development in all sectors.
The Ambassador said that the nation is in fast tracking reforms to make the country part of the regional and world trading system. The ratification of Ethiopia’s participation in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the work to the accession negotiation to the multilateral trading system, the World Trade Organization (WTO) are showcases to this fact.
Ethiopia has a vision to build the trade brain of the country at the Ministry who can lead negotiations based on the vast practical knowledge that can be learned from more experienced countries, as to him.
The Ministry can benefit from the technical assistance provided by the European Union and other development partners to ensure the successful integration of the country into the regional and global trading system. This will help to improve the business environment for exporters.
Through reduction of trade cost, increased competitiveness of firms, improved export performance enhanced more jobs and income, facilitating trade can increase economic growth, he reiterated.
Misganu stressed that further cooperation is needed in the area of digital marketing for export promotion, capacity building for public servants, building the capacity of the private sector and building supportive business environment for exports to meet the intended target.
Ethiopia, so as to realize its development goals and contribute to Africa’s growth, it has to work towards easing doing business along with providing trade facilitation and enhancement activities.
The Ethiopian Herald November6, 2019
BY BETELHEM BEDLU
