ADDIS ABABA – The Ministry of Agriculture has planned to step up horticulture products through improved production mechanisms to the global market in the current fiscal year.
Speaking to The Ethiopian Herald, Horticulture Export Coordinator Mekonnen Solomon said that pronouncing the gaps and lessons learnt previously, the ministry is aggressively engaging on various interventions to promote the potential of the country for horticulture investment and export volumes.
He further remarked that the ministry has been taking bold steps to boost the value of flower production by coordinating land for export consolidators with districts and urban settlements.
So far, in coordination with the regions and stakeholders, it has been identifying and preparing new land for new investors who are engaged in horticulture export development to create a favorable environment for exporting.
“We are establishing and implementing a cold framework management system from farm to market to maintain and send quality horticulture products to the international market,” he pinpointed.
Moreover, despite the limitations in land which is used for flower cultivation in the past seven years, the company has managed to utilize the existing land economically with new varieties that are desirable and productive in the market.
As to him, Netherlands, UK, Saudi Arabia, USA and Japan are among the destination countries importing a large volume of flowers, while Somalia, Djibouti, Netherlands, Russia and UK importing a large segment of vegetables.
He further indicated that a remarkable amount of foreign currency income was registered by improving and exporting qualified flowers and adding value to packaging to market destinations which meet the requirements of the destination markets in the past seven years.
“Lack of quality product, logistics and adequate transportation system, land access, sectoral coordination and others are the bottlenecks witnessed in the sector that result in the lower amount of fruits and vegetables has not been able to penetrate the global market destination,” he emphasized.
Agriculture, manufacturing industry, mining and service sector are among the main export economic sectors that the Government of Ethiopia has given priority, he stated.
In the previous Ethiopian Fiscal Year, the total national export performance of the above mentioned sectors reached 3.635 billion USD. Out of this, the share of the agricultural sector accounts 79.5%, it was learnt.
Besides, coffee accounts for 46%, while horticulture investment hit 23% share and this makes the coffee and horticulture investment sub-sectors to play significant contributions to the performance of exports in the previous fiscal year, he remarked.
BY ASHENAFI ANIMUT
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 29 SEPTEMBER 2023
