Licensing for investment in the manufacturing sector has shown an increase in Ethiopia. The Ministry of Industry has licensed 56 projects in textiles, chemical, pharmaceutical, leather and agro-processing in just the last two and a half months according to sources.
805 million birr in capital has been invested in Ethiopia between January-March in projects expected to employ more than 3450 permanent and 3850 temporary people when fully operational.
A total of 1043 projects were licensed with a total capital of 31.2 billion birr in the last year.
Ethiopia plans to encourage the growth in the manufacturing sector by mobilizing large numbers of human labor, creating market potential, utilizing agricultural inputs and taking advantage of new technology.It is to be remembered that the country earned 193.5 million US dollars in the first three quarters of the current financial year which is less than the target of 334.3 million US dollars set by the Ministry of Industry.
45% of manufactured exports were of leather and leather products earning close to 86.9 million US dollars, while textiles and garments earned 63.4 million US dollars and processed agriculture projects raised 37.4 million US dollars. Pharmaceutical and chemical exports took the smallest share of total export earnings with just 5.7 million US dollars.
The MoI expects to raise an additional 471.2 million US dollars from the sector.
Source: Capital
