The manufacturing sector will remain a priority in the government’s economic policy to attain Ethiopia’s structural economic change, The Ministry of Industry announced.
Dr. Ambachew Mekonen, Minister of Industry briefed journalists today on prioritizing the manufacturing industries as a critical sector in enabling Ethiopia to alleviate poverty through viable economic transformation.
According to the minister, Ethiopia has embarked on industrial transformation as a national strategy to ascertain export oriented economy in the country over coming years.
Despite the modest growth of the manufacturing sector at 58 percent by attracting global manufacturers, the production capacity and export remained far below projection.
Ambachew pointed out drawbacks for the cause of law production and export, the past three years shortage of foreign currency, raw materials, political instability were the major challenges the sector has faced.
In the previous fiscal year, the country achieved only 48 of the national plan in exporting leather and leather products, food and beverage, metal, textile and among other products showing 11 percent reduction from the same period of last year.
“The ultimate goal of our industrial policy is just to ensure an export oriented economy that enables us to compete in the global market. In spite of the growth over the years, our export potential has not yet grown as we have expected”, the Minister said.
The manufacturing sector has now 6.4 percent share of the GDP which has registered 17.4 percent growth in 2017/18 Ethiopian budget year, it was indicated.
Stating low production and export performance as a bottlenecks of Ethiopian economy, the government of Ethiopia has been exerting a maximum effort to enable the manufacturers to engage with their full capacity, he pointed out.
The country has been striving in the manufacturing sector to obtain close to four billion USD from export trade, Dr. Ambachew stated.
He added that as part of the current political reform, the country is striving to effectively implement the nation’s industrial policy and strategy to speed up the national economic growth.
Ministry of industry has been conducting a three day discussion to assess the national performance of the manufacturing sector over the preceding year and to chart out operational directions for the current fiscal year.