Ethiopia seeks more investment from India

Addis Ababa, May 23 (WIC) – Hailemariam Desalegn, Deputy Prime Minister and Minster of Foreign Affairs said that Ethiopia seeks more collaboration with India in the areas of ICT and agricultural technologies.
In an exclusive interview with WIC, Hailemariam said that India is best known for its ICT and agricultural technologies for which Ethiopia has a great potential. He said that it will be easy for Indian investors to come to Ethiopia due to the deep rooted people to people relation between the two countries.
“We have a long history of getting along with each other,” Hailemariam said. “If we counterpart with India, it will be easy for us to come out in the world economy,” Hailemariam told WIC.

According to the Ministry of Trade (MoT), in recent years total trade exchange between Ethiopia and India has shown a 21 percent increase in average per annum while imports from India has shown an increase of 22 percent. India’s overall investment in Africa has also reached 33 billion dollars.

“Africa is becoming stable and democracy is flourishing in many African countries,” Hailemariam said. “Emerging powers such as India and China are aware they can harness Africa’s comparative advantage in untapped natural resources and young cheap labor”.

According to Hailemariam, compared to Europe and America, who were hardly hit by the financial crisis, the emerging powers with their strong saving culture, have enough money to come and invest in Africa.

Admitting that Ethiopia has not attracted European investors as much as it should, the deputy prime minister underscored the importance of promoting investment opportunities in Ethiopia to European and North American countries.

With such objective in mind the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in collaboration with the British Embassy in Ethiopia and Wafa Marketing and Promotion Plc, are finalizing preparations to organize Ethio-UK Investment Forum in London in June 2011.

“We need to diversify the investment in our country,” Hailemariam said. “We have to go to Europe and North America and attract FDI from those areas”.

With a view to harnessing Ethiopia’s investment potential, Hailemariam said that his government is working to modernize the overall working system.

“We are working to make the bureaucratic bottleneck easier for investors,” Hailemariam told WIC.

Source..(waltainfo.com)