A briefing for Ethiopia’s new ambassadors and plenipotentiaries
The Government recently appointed some twenty one Ambassadors Extraordinary and Plenipotentiaries as well as another fifteen Ambassadors as deputy heads of mission. For the last three weeks the new appointees have had an intensive training programme and briefing.
A central element in the briefings concentrated on the fundamental element of Ethiopia’s foreign policy today, the importance of economic diplomacy. Among those who addressed the newly appointed ambassadors was Prime Minister Meles. He underlined the importance of economic diplomacy in all its aspects, and encouraged the ambassadors to concentrate on such elements as the transfer of technology and of technical “know-how”, and in particular to look for possible ways to encourage investment in manufacturing schemes which would be labour intensive.
A related topic was the marketing of Ethiopian products abroad. Again, the value of increased exports in terms of employment as well as earnings was underlined. Ethiopia’s exports remain largely agricultural but they do also need to be marketed. Other priority areas for the new envoys included the importance of attracting foreign direct investment to Ethiopia and the mobilisation of new resources to help implement the new Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP). The Prime Minister has already announced a number of measures to help implement the plan when speaking to the House of Representatives last week. Among these were plans to increase savings, including adjustment of the deposit interest rates to take account of annual inflation pressures and the introduction of government treasury bonds as well as accessibility to financial institutions and banks and the introduction of various mortgage schemes. The government is also planning significant tax reforms and improved tax collection starting this year with projections that 70% of the 77.2 billion birr budget will come from tax. It intends that tax revenue will continue to rise steadily during the five-year plan, but any balance will be financed from outside sources. The Prime Minister told Parliament that the Government would look first to foreign direct investment and then to grants and aid. The plan allows for increases in infrastructure which will provide for farmers to have “access to the latest telecommunications services at international market prices, to electricity, and interconnecting roads at the kebele level…” The overall aim for the Growth and Transformation Plan is to double agriculture production and to reach a level of industrialisation that can produce, for example, machinery and spare parts as well as provide for infrastructural development. Overall, the government envisages attracting investments worth at least 10 billion dollars over the period of the plan.