Government cannot have the capacity to employ all the bulging youth population. What it could do is providing enabling policy environment for the youths so that they could create employment for themselves and many others.
Unless and otherwise, the business environment encourages the proliferation of new businesses, unemployment will further get exacerbated, a recipe to poverty and instability, just to say the least.
Despite some efforts, the constraints along the policy environment, compounded by poor service delivery and limited use of technology, hampered the mushrooming of new businesses in the country.
Hence, Ethiopia finds itself at the bottom list of the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business 2018 list- 159th from 190 countries. This obviously rings the alarm bell to policy makers. Of course, the administration led by Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed swiftly responded to it. First and foremost, the country admitted as the rank defines the business environment. This by itself is half way to the solution.
But a more far-sighted decision made by the administration is the Steering Committee established to come up with innovative mechanisms and improve the rank in the short, medium and long-terms. Ten Key sectors including Federal Supreme Court, Ministry of Revenue, Customs Commission, Ethiopia Electric Power, the National Bank of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa City Administration have started taking measures that could ease doing business in the country.
And encouraging activities have so far been accomplished. To mention, the Federal Supreme Court has commenced specialized services on the arbitration of banking and insurance cases. Similarly, most others are looking into
restraints with respect laws and they would soon come up with revised ones. The Council of Ministers and the FDRE house of people’s representatives are expected to make further scrutiny and pass the laws.
The Premier, however, during the first one month review session underlined that all the ten offices should come up with tangible tasks to help private sector gets into businesses easily. Also, the improvement on the policy environment and service provision are likely to attract more FDI to the country.
To facilitate this government already decided to deal with around 80 actions in the short term.
Ten indicators have already been drawn. 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.
More than anything else, governments determination to cut short straightjacket 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 thing is that the activities must go with the same pace. And all the actors in the sectors should think outside the box to devise a feasible solution.
As the country aims to broaden its tax base and increase domestic revenue; thereby, doing away with budgetary deficits witnessed year in and year out, ease of doing business is a must do task than a mere option. This is not to mention the country’s ardent actions to success its privatization move.
Herald March 29/2019
