Trade ministry targets $5.4 billion from export

The Industry sector is not taking the grip on shares as expected

The Ministry of Trade and Regional Integration (MOTRI) plans to generate 5.4 billion dollars from export for the 2022/23 trading year.

MOTRI emphasizes that structural economic transaction requires time as the agriculture sector takes lead, whilst the industry sector lags behind.

In a press conference held on Wednesday, MOTRI disclosed the country had earned 4.12 billion dollars in export revenues during the just concluded Ethiopian 2021/2022 fiscal year, which ended on July 7.

The Ministry pointed out that the agriculture sector had generated 72 per cent of the projected plan.

“The agriculture sector still has the economic lead, generating the highest incomes, and it will take a lot of work to achieve the structural economic transition,” said Kassahun Gofe, State Minister of MOTRI.

As the minister indicated, though efforts to improve the diversification of Ethiopia’s export products are taking shape for the structural transaction, it is not easily achievable in a short period of time, thus the agricultural sector will continue to take lead in export earnings. The agriculture sector marked 105 percent of its overall plan, while the industrial sector generated 12 percent of revenues for its 80 per cent wholesale plan, whilst the 53 percent overall costof-business plan for the sector generated revenues of 14 percent.

“The Industry sector is not taking the grip on shares as expected and the country out to double its efforts to transition from Agri led to Industry led,” said Kassahun, adding, “This is atop of our plans to improve for the coming year.” “This revenue generated showed a growth of 13.81 percent from the last budget year and gave much meaning to the country when it jumped out of revenue,” the State Minister explained highlighting that the growth in interest-trading revenues would improve the country's ability to embrace, fly and restore credit. The figure has shown 500 million dollars revenue jump from 2020/21 which was only 3.62 billion dollars. However, MOTRI disclosed the 2021/22 fiscal year export revenue fell slightly short of the government export revenue target which was 4.63 billion USD. In terms of the commodity composition of exports, although coffee continues to dominate the top spot, also other five major noncoffee exports, oilseeds, gold, chat, flower, and pulses each reeled in more than 100 million dollars per year. According to the Ministry of Industry (MOI), the industry sector had generated about 500 million U.S. dollars in export revenue from the manufacturing industry sector in the 2021/2022 fiscal year. The revenue marked a 100 million U.S. dollars increase as compared with the previous Ethiopian 2020/21 fiscal year. The lack of side-links, illegal smuggling trade and the slow pace of structural economic transition are some of the problems that are indicated by the state minister as hurdles facing the export business.

“Export is the cornerstone to realize the 2025 plan of the country to join middle income countries. To this end agriculture, manufacturing and mining sector pays significant role for the overall export progress of the country. Even though the export performance of the country showed increments from time to time the result doesn’t meet the desired goals,” the trade ministry underlined. Ethiopia gives due emphasis to the agriculture, mining and manufacturing sectors such as textile and garment, leather and pharmaceuticals exports as sources of substantial foreign currency. The country’s export performance shows improvement but still much effort remains to boost the export performance of the country in all sectors.