It is unfair for this generation to boast ancestors’ victory over colonialism at the battle of Adwa while simply ignoring own responsibility, putting straitjacket on the service sector and failing to ensure enabling business climate.
The ambitions incorporated in the Growth and Transformation Plan II particularly that of becoming hub of light manufacturing industries by 2025 and awarding the bulging youth population with decent jobs, among others, stands in contradiction with the inefficiency of the service delivery, to say the least. The World Bank’s flagship report, easing of doing business 2019, enlisted Ethiopia at 159th among 190 economies.
The Bank’s data set in weighing countries’ doing business included time and cost taken to start up new business, property registration, minority business protection, financial supply, among others. Starting up new business in itself is headache when compounded by straightjacket. Hence, many educated youths who could translate their ideas into incomes to themselves and many more others remained jobless, if not dependent on their parents.
The policy and legal environment as well as poor attitude of people who are in the frontline of service delivery seem to have contributed a lot to the piling up of the problem. Innovative approaches to deal with challenges faced are not only rare but considering such approaches has become taboo for so long. Leave this aside; the government usually downplayed international reports, including the easing of doing business.
It is much harder to decide which pill to swallow unless and otherwise the system is diagnosed for the proper disease. Recently, the new administration led by Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed accepted as doing business in Ethiopia is tougher to domestic and foreign investors, and it commits to bring about short, medium and long-term solution to ease the business climate.
Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed stressed the critical need for ensuring quality growth for it relieves the country from debt burden and natural resource dependence thereby to achieving allround and sustainable development. A National Steering Committee established to evaluate the imple -mentation of the actions identified for improvement reported its finding Tuesday in an occasion attended by the premier and representatives key government agencies. The premier rightly said: “Government’s plan is to increase domestic revenue but the practice shows that new businesses have not proliferated owing to straitjacket.”
People who have business plans usually find it hard to translate their plans to practice due to restrictive legal environment, backward service delivery and bureaucratic hassling, he said, adding that the objective of the national initiative is to devise innovative mechanisms that enable both domestic and foreign investors easily get into businesses and ensure profitability. He also indicated, as the initiative is part of mitigating fiscal policy gap focusing on revenue, expenditure and budget deficit.
Explaining these, he said the government has prioritized to broaden the tax base in addition to automating the service provision while shifting interest to concessional loan and abolishing straitjacket. “Our plan is to keep the national budget deficit to the minimum by broadening the revenue base and cutting government expenditure.” To him, by increasing private participation, it is possible to award citizens with a new lease of life. Minor problems emanating from inefficient system and bureaucracy should not set barricade along their journey, he said.
Private investors that could inject a capital as big as 7 billion USD to the business have shown interest to engage in road and energy production sectors, he revealed. “Easing the business and trade climate can attract more anchor investors to the country that can involve in agro-processing, manufacturing, mining and other areas.” The government has identified around 80 actions to deal with them in the short term. And around ten indicators have already been set up.
Starting business, construction permits, registering property, getting electricity, getting credit, paying taxes, trading across borders, resolving insolvency, protecting minority rights and enforcing contracts are among the indicators. Within these indicators, the aim is to cut bureaucratic hassling short. “Among the bottlenecks in doing business are 32 days to start business, 93 days to get electricity, and 300 hours to comply with tax regulations,” according to Ethiopian News Agency.
The government is determined to cut bureaucratic red tape in electricity, housing, mining manufacturing and SMES by taking measures that stretches up to improving trade and customs law and producers in one hand and by installing ways and means of ensuring fair trade arbitration and automating the service delivery. The report included tasks accomplished by Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ethiopian Electric Corporation, Ministry of Revenue, Addis Ababa City Administration, Supreme Court and National Bank of Ethiopia.
The premier appreciated the activities accomplished so far that included improving proclamations, guidelines and directives to green light easing of doing business. Senior government officials that commented on the review report have expressed commitments to do away with most problems in two weeks time and translate the plan to reality.
After appraisal by the Federal Attorney General, the laws that have seen improvements, would be referred to Council of Ministers for further scrutiny and will eventually see the light of day by the house of people’s representatives. Unless and otherwise every citizen and government walks the talks, it is just pretention to celebrate the victory of ancestors. The lessons be them unity, loyalty, cooperation, sacrifice or what have you should properly be emulated.
The Ethiopian Herald March 1, 2019
BY WORKU BELACHEW
