ADDIS ABABA – Ministry of Mines, Petroleum and Natural Gas said that it continues efforts to improve sectors export performance.
In an exclusive interview with The Ethiopian Herald Ministry’s Communication Director Michael Mengesha, said that previous experiences of the nation has witnessed that the mineral sector has a better performance to earn foreign currency. However, lately, due to some economic and political ups and downs the sector has shown some kind of decrease.
Comparing with last budget year performance, the sector has shown 32.8 percent decrement.
According to him, expansion of contraband trade at border areas, use of gold for medium of transaction in illegal trade, foreign currency scarcity, political unrest in some part of the country and other reasons were among the bottleneck for the under-performance,
The Director said, the country has earned 7.179 million USD from the export of 203.2 Kg gold, and 1,811.53 m3 marble.
He said, creation of job opportunity in the sector is another area where gaps are witnessed. According to him, it was targeted to create 4,746 job opportunities in various companies. However, only 1,707 jobs were created. In the same way, though it was planned to create job opportunities for 198,890 traditional gold miners only 177,035 people have benefitted.
As to him, the Ministry setting plan to earn 3.35 million USD from petroleum and related services, it has secured 2.36 million USD- which is 70.44 percent of the plan.
The Ethiopian Herald July 10/2019
BY BETELHEM BEDLU
