ADDIS ABABA (ENA) -The Government of Ethiopia and Development Partners Group (DPG) undertaken a retreat on Tuseday in Africa Leadership Excellence Academy in the presence of State Ministers and Heads of Development Partners.
The retreat is a follow up event on the High-Level Development Forum (HLDF), held on the 14th of March in which the Government and the DPG renewed their commitment to work together on addressing the challenges on peace-building, resilience and macro-economic development.
In her opening remarks, Finance State Minister Semereta Sewasew asserted that strong alignment with the national development priorities, diversification of sources of finance and due emphasis on the humanitarian-development-peace nexus are important factors to gear the joint efforts of the DPG and the government in the desired direction of success.
The retreat was first guided by a presentation on the draft Medium-Term Development and Investment Plan of Ethiopia (MDIP 2023/2024-2025/2026) and followed by the draft Sustainable Financing Strategy.
The Ministry of Planning and Development expounded the three-year priority areas of MDIP which are derived from the Ten Year Development Plan and aligned with HGER 2.0. The MDIP puts the expected growth of sectors of which industry is expected to grow more.
The DPG appreciated the preparation of the MDIP in detail manner and also reflected the importance of focusing more on specific challenges that Ethiopia is currently facing. The retreat also discussed the draft report of Ethiopia’s Sustainable Financing Strategy (ESFS).
The strategy has been prepared with the leadership of the Ministry of Finance intending to come up with a financing framework providing diversified sources of financing for the growing development needs of the country.
The financing strategy identifies four sources of financing which are domestic public financing, international public financing (ODA), domestic private source and international private source.
As outlined on the presentation, Ethiopia’s development finance for the past several years has been mostly dependent on local public investment which is not sustainable and insufficient.
The strategy recommends unpacking the financing potential with the growing role of both local and international private sector and using the government investment as catalytic role.
In this regard, the strategy argues that there should be a new mechanism of financing several sectors in Ethiopia through attracting private investments which at the moment are being run by the government funding mostly insufficiently and inefficiently.
The DPG welcomed the draft financing strategy and appreciated the intent of pooling in more private actors in the economy in a new commitment and spirit.
Semereta also appreciated the idea of introducing crowding in commercial financing to ensure sustainable financing of the development needs.
The Co-Chairs of DPG, Semereta Sewasew, Ramiz Alkbarov (PhD), UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator and Phil Elks, acting development director, FCDO led the discourses, according to Ministry of Finance.
The Ethiopian herald May 4/2024
