Ethiopia revealed plans to develop 46 additional projects in the textile industry by 2015 to increase the revenue from the sector to 2.5 billion US dollars at the end of the time.

It is expected that six of the projects will become operational during the next financial year with a further 18 being launched in the year after; the remaining 22 will be operational in the years up to the end of the 5 years GTP period, 2015.

Two of the anticipated projects are expected to be cotton ginning industries; four are spinning industries, a knitting industry, seven weaving and one finished woven textile industry.

The plan set out for the textile sector also includes increasing revenue through capacity building and through making use of existing factories and to attract new investments.

The new projects are in line with estimates to increase the number of spindles in the sector from 236,852 to 1, 000,000, the number of stitching machines for knitting and weaving from 9000-20,000 and the number of loom s from 1,336-5000.

The projects are expected to make use of the significant human resource which can easily be trained and put to work for relatively low cost especially in comparison with other textile producing countries in African and Asia.

The plan also takes into account projections of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements with the region and outside, the African Growth and Opportunity Act established by the United States and agreements with a range of countries including Russia, Arabian Gulf and Yemen.

Source: Capital