Ethiopia plans to export 206 million dollars worth of leather products in the current fiscal year.

That is almost double the income the country received last year, when it made 104.1 million dollars from leather.

The Leather Industry Development Institute (LIDI) is going to make 54,000 pairs of shoes a day, up by 35,000 pairs than its current production.

Ethiopia achieved 73 percent of its target from the export of leather in the fiscal year to 8 July 2011, Wondu Legesse, director general of the institute, said.

The institute has made twining agreements with two Indian leather schools to help increase Ethiopia’s exports and transfer products into finished products, he Wondu said.

He said that the quantity of leather supplied to manufacturers had fallen from 40 percent of hides and skins two years ago to less than 15 percent this year.

To achieve it target for the current fiscal year, the institute has partly placed its trust in new leather companies like a Chinese company called New Wings, whose manufacturing capacity is 8,000 pairs of shoes a day and a German company called Ara.

Source: Capital