. Macroeconomic stability persists
ADDIS ABABA– Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed said Ethiopia has finalized its preparation to re-establish maritime force in the Red Sea in a view to creating a safe passage for its merchant ships and ensuring national and regional peace and stability.
Presenting his government’s annual performance report before the House of Peoples’ Representatives yesterday, the Premier stated that re-establishing of the Ethiopian Navy in the Red Sea has become the order of the day since the country carries out the bulk of its import-export activities in this route.
Noting that activities are underway to formulate a sub-regional Red Sea Area Policy, he said that the initiative enables Ethiopia to protect its merchant ships from piracy, terrorism and attack by militant groups in the Red Sea ports. The naval forces also keep the peaceful operation of Ethiopian trading vessels in the sea that has become world great powers’ bone of contention .
Regarding Ethiopia’s diplomacy, the PM noted that more attention has been given to neighboring countries envisioned to create a peaceful and brotherly relations with all adjacent nations.
“Ethiopia’s rapprochement with Eritrea is a milestone in changing the two-decade long mistrust and hostility to that of cooperation and peaceful partnership and the country has also taken part in supporting peace efforts in Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.”
Dr. Abiy stated that Ethiopia follows citizen – centered diplomacy and its diplomatic missions abroad have been carried out successful tasks to ensure the rights and benefits of Ethiopian citizens. Due to consolidated efforts, over 15,000 Ethiopians detained in various prisons were set free and additional 76,000 whose contracts terminated were repatriated peacefully.
The embassies have made meticulous efforts to reach agreements with Ethiopian labor hiring countries and labor recruitment pacts that ensure the rights and benefits of Ethiopian employees concluded with Middle East governments whist similar pacts are on the pipeline.
Furthermore, the country allows all African brothers and sisters the privilege to visa-on-arrival and ratified the Continental Free Trade Area in a view to boosting trade relations with fellow Africans.
The PM indicated that the country’s foreign relations and diplomatic relations beyond the East African region centered on the principled stance that is not hijacked by agendas and rivalries of global and regional powers. Ethiopia’s diplomacy aims to capitalize on the benefit the country could obtain from every corner of the world.
As a result of this, Ethiopia managed to witness huge success in establishing new diplomatic relations and cementing the existing ones. “Apart from enhancing multilateral diplomacy, Ethiopia’s priority economic diplomacy brings significant success,” Abiy said, adding that the country has obtained over three billion USD from various international institutions to the success of the ongoing economic reform.
The significant amount of grant and loan the country secured from the existing and new development partners coupled with the unprecedented level of debt canceling contributed to supplement Ethiopia’s forex reserves, he elaborated.
About the economic performance, the Premier stated that the country has carried out successive reforms that enable to stabilize and restructure the economy in a bid to achieve economic goals.
The persistent economic growth Ethiopia has been registered over decade and plus years slow down due to shortcomings in developmental financial model and the political and social problems the country has been encountering for the past three years. During the 2015/16-2017/18 fiscal years Ethiopia’s average annual economic growth was 8.6 percent and the growth in 2017/18 fiscal year was 7.7 percent.
Dr. Abiy pointed out that priority has been given to restructure the macroeconomic imbalance in the current fiscal year and despite a minor slump in the 11 months export performance, the overall economy is healthy and projected to grow by 9.2 percent in this year.
Noting that Ethiopia has over 11 million unemployed citizens and two million new entrants to the labor market, he said that the economy has managed to generate over one million jobs per annum. “The newly-established commission has become full operational and plan set to provide three million jobs both in home and abroad; whilst 1.4 million jobs were created during the past 11 months of the current fiscal year.
Regarding to the government’s revenue, it was indicated that 178.5 billon Birr was collected during reported period whilst the figure surpassed last year same period by 10 percent. It is expected to collect 189 billon birr till the end of the budget year and the figure exceeds last year’s performance of 176 billion birr.
According to Prime Minister Abiy, despite the unsatisfactory export sector’s performance, the country secured 21 billion USD during the past 10 months of the reported period from public and private remittance, FDI, loan and other sources.
The total amount of money deposited in both state-owned and private banks surpassed by 22 percent from last year same period whilst the total amount of money the banks disbursing also exceeded by 35 percent. As 65 percent of the stated loan was disbursed to private sector, the remaining meant to finance the public sector.
Concerning inflation, the Premier pointed out that the government set plan to keep it up at a single digit and it was managed to reduce it from 16.8 percent from the end of last budget year to lesser than 12 percent till May 2019.
According to him, extensive activities are underway to partially and fully transfer state-owned strategic companies to private capital and the government put in place three phases for the privatization. In this regard, Ethio-telecom and Sugar Corporation are identified as the first to be transferred followed by energy generation plants, Railway Corporation and logistics firms whilst industry parks and Ethiopian Airlines are in the last row.
The Ethiopian Herald, July 2/2019
BY BILAL DERSO
Photo:- Dagne Abera
