Ethiopia is Growing Fast, But not as Fast the Government Wants

With only one year to go before the expiry of the Growth & Transformation Plan (GTP), Members of Parliament expressed concerns about the failure to trigger economic structural transformation when the Plan’s implementation performance for the year 2012/13 was presented to them on Thursday, April 10, 2014. Discussion was dominated by problems related to export performance and limited resource allocation to the private sector.

The concerns raised during the 23rd regular meeting by members of the 547-seat Parliament, most notably by Girma Seifu, the lone opposition member in the legislative chamber representing Medrek, were almost identical to the concerns that were raised during the discussion on the report with international aid agencies and ‘development partners’ exactly a week earlier at the UNECA Conference Hall. This follows from the report by Abraham Tekeste (PhD), state minister for Finance & Economic Development,

While commenting on the 134-page-long report girma claimed that the government had forgotten about the high case scenario that envisions registering more than 14pc of annual growth and has settled for the basic growth rate of 11pc.

“But the government is having a hard time achieving even that,” Girma told MPs.

Girma also said electricity issues had become a major setback for the growth of the manufacturing industry, with reports showing an increase of only 177Mw over the last three years.

“The construction of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) should not blind us from seeing the reality on the ground,” the MP said in his critique of the report.

Read more at: Addis Fortune