As part of the effort to ease the impact of COVID-19 on the investment sector, the Ethiopian government has made available three major incentives for investors operating inside Industrial Parks.
Derbie Debele, communications head of Industrial Parks Development Corporation (IPDC), said the incentives are intended to help investors shoulder and sustain the blow the pandemic is anticipated to have on investment.
The first of the three incentives is aimed at encouraging investors who have not received any orders from abroad for the past two months, and have consequently lost procurement agreement from their clients overseas. These are allowed to offer their products to the local market.
The second incentive is concerned with the free transport of goods from the Modjo dry port to the Djibouti port. This is available for all investors in industrial parks, Mr. Derbie notes.
The last one is an incentive that offers a six-month cargo service for those who use Ethiopian Airlines cargo services.
“Apart from providing investors with a range of initiative to promote the export sector, the IPDC has been implementing various measures in coordination with the Ministry of Transport to resolve investors’ continuous logistics complains,” the head of communications pointed out.
Various factories in investment parks are now "actively engaged" in producing face masks, Mr. Derbie highlighted, stressing that the face masks produced are export-quality. The face mask production, once it fulfills the local supply, is hoped to serve other African markets as well. Hawassa Industrial Park, for one, is producing over 50,000 face masks per day and has already started exporting its product.
Working on infrastructural facilities has been a priority of the IPDC during the budget year, the head of communications said. The Industrial Parks Development Corporation has some 70,000 employees.
Industrial Parks in Ethiopia have generated $122 million during the past nine months of the Ethiopian budget year, which is 75 percent of the target set for the period and yet has shown an increment of 32 percent compared to the same period last year.
Source: The Ethiopian Herald
