Ethiopia earns $70.8 million from textiles
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Textile exports brought in almost USD 71 million during the last ten months.
That’s almost 50pct better than last year but short of the USD 136.3 Million they hope. As expected, value added finished products like garments and woven crafts have been selling more, 75.1 percent and 5.2 percent respectively.
Textile fabrics were 10.7 percent and yarn at just above nine percent.
Fekadu Ethiopia, Corporate Communications Expert at Textile Industry Development Institute (TIDI) said the earnings although an improvement from last year’s performance were still well below expectations because of delays in textile projects that were expected to become operational in this current fiscal year.
TIDI expects that by the end of the current fiscal year, on July 8, 2012, eight new and expansion projects will be completed and become operational with a total outlay cost of more than 4.4 billion birr.
Five of the projects are new and are being constructed at a total cost of more than 3.4 billion birr with an expected employment opportunity of three thousand people, while the other three expansion projects under construction total over one billion birr with an estimated employment potential of 1,800 people.
The eight projects essentially comprise of factories which can produce T-shirts, yarn, woven, finished and knitted fabrics. Ethiopians, Turks, Indians and Pakistanis are the players in the textile industry, separately or as a joint venture with the Ethiopian government.
One of the projects included in this list recently commissioned, Saygin Dima Textile Share Company, a Turkish company which is part of Saygin Group constructed and commissioned with the Ethiopian government roughly employs 1,000 people. It is located in Alem Gena town with a total capital of roughly 387 million birr.
Fekadu particularly said they are anticipating a big increase in textile production and revenue with the expected commissioning next month of the Ethiopian Government and Turkish private company joint venture Selen Dawa textile Share Company with a capital of more than 1.1 billion birr.
Other smaller textile projects expected to be commissioned soon are the Indian owned textile project Mahiveri Textile industries, the locally owned Tihut Knitting and Garment factory and Pakistani owned Al-ASR industries with a capacity of 15 tons of woven fabrics and 24 tons of finished garments daily.
The government of Ethiopia has unveiled plans for the textile industry to have 46 additional projects by the end of the Growth and Transformation Plan in 2015, contributing to the sector’s projected revenue of USD 2.5 billion by 2015.
Source: Capital Ethiopia
