Ethiopia approves record over $10 billion annual budget

By Tesfa-Alem Tekle

July 8, 2015 (ADDIS ABABA) – The Ethiopian parliament on Tuesday approved record high 223.3 billion Birr (around $11 billion) for the 2015/16 budget year.

The new budget for the upcoming Ethiopian fiscal year beginning this month was approved after Ethiopia’s Council of Ministers (cabinet) approved the proposed budget and referred it to House of Peoples of Representative (lower house of the Ethiopian parliament) for endorsement.

According to the Ethiopian minister of finance and economic development, Sufian Ahmed, the new budget has saw nearly 20 percent rise compared to the previous one.

The increment on the new budget, Ahmed said was to cope up the increasing expenditure on the country’s ongoing broad developmental related goals.

Among the total sum, 84.3 billion Biir ($4 billion) will be allocated for capital expenditure and some 50 billion birr ($2.5b) of it for regular expenditure including for administrative, economic and social services purpose.

34.7 percent of it will be embarked to subsidies regional governments and two city administrations (Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa) while another 5.4 percent goes for the expenses to achieve sustainable development projects.

The lion’s share, some 71 percent of the total federal government’s budget will be allocated for education, agricultural, health, for expansion of the road network, water, rural electrification projects and for urban development including housing spending.

Sufian said that the country’s ongoing efforts to alleviate poverty are on the right track although more is needed to be done to improve performance in the export trade sector.

According to government figures seen by Sudan Tribune, the country has considerably reduced level of poverty to 29.6% in 2012.

Ethiopia, which is Africa’s second most populace nation after Nigeria, intends to become a middle income nation by 2025.

Recording an average 11 % economic growth for the past decade, the horn of Africa’s nation actually is Africa’s leading and one of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies.

The Ethiopian minister said the country has witnessed a rapid, sustainable, widespread and equitable growth in agriculture, services, manufacturing and industry during the just concluded five year Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) period.

During the last five years GTP period the per capita income of citizens has been grown steadily and stands at $ 632 in 2014.

(ST)