As Ethiopia is facing an ever-increasing level of unemployment, the performance of new investment activities should be evaluated based on the number of jobs they create. Experts on the sector claim that the creation of wide and diversified job opportunities that reduce the growing
unemployment should be taken as the major indicator of effective investment. Ambassador Tiruneh Zena, who is also Economist by profession, told the Amharic daily Addis Zemen that in Ethiopia job creation has become the major criterion to test the effectiveness of investment.
According to Tiruneh, some of the investment projects in Ethiopia are capital incentives. In precise terms, it refers to business processes or industries that need large amounts of investment to produce goods and services. Hence, to avert this, the government of Ethiopia is striving to attract investors in labor-intensive industries.
According to him, the textile industry is taken as an instance of labor-intensive. It utilizes large manpower and doesn’t spend a lot on fixed assets. The fundamental goal of many investors preferring Ethiopia as a lucrative investment destination is attributed to the abundant labor supply, he added.
Doctor Kasa Teshager, Developmental Economics Lecturer at Civil Service University on his part said economic growth need to be proportional to the creation of jobs for citizens. “Hence, whenever the economy grows, citizens have to have increasing job opportunities to become beneficiaries of the growth.
In the past, poor strategies, particularly in the manufacturing industry, have led the country to fail in its job creation endeavors. Furthermore, the limited capacity of public institutes and inadequate involvement of the private sectors remained the major hurdles in solving the country’s widespread unemployment.
Though the country has been registering sustainable economic growth, it is restricted to the construction and the service sector, Kasa said. Applauding the government’s ambition to create three million jobs this fiscal year, Kasa noted that the plan should go in line with the country’s economy.
Kassa further said that the agriculture sector which seemed to have been in the state of dormancy over the past 27 years should also be taken as a lucrative area in job creation. Thus, to create a wide range of job opportunities, the government should work with the private sector and non-governmental organizations focusing on the industry, tourism and agriculture sectors.
Dr. Weretaw Bezabih, Job Creation Expert seconded the view that the success of investment endeavors should be measured in terms of the job opportunities they create. This is how the country can change its large number of population into wealth.
Ethiopia has given due emphasis to the manufacturing sector on its transition from agriculture to the industry-led economy. Accordingly, the government has built many industrial parks, of which some have already started operation.
So far these parks have created more than 90,000 job opportunities. He also suggested that the government has to shorten the bureaucracy in service providing public organizations for investment to thrive.
The Ethiopian Herald, August 22/2019
BY LAKACHEW ATINAF
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