Ethiopia budget mainly targeting to combat poverty approved

By Tesfa-Alem Tekle

July1, 2010 (ADDIS ABABA) — Ethiopia’s parliament on Thursday approved USD 5.7 billion budget for the 2010/2011 fiscal year, ever biggest, seeing an increasing spending on Road and education.

The budget marks a 19.7 percent increase in spending over last year.

Ethiopian prime minister who responded to questions rose from the house said his government has given special attention to poverty reduction allocating 70 % of the total budget.

“Ethiopia is the only African country to earmark such budget mainly targeting for the implementation of programs on poverty reduction,” Meles Zenawi said.

“No other African nation did so; it is less than 20% of their annual budget what other African countries allot to poverty reduction, same percent of the budget we allocated for education alone.”

Meles further said that Ethiopia has the best Budget distribution mechanism in the continent.

Finance and Economic Development State Minister, Mekonnen Manyazewal said some 74 % of the federal budget will be covered from internal sources and the rest will be covered from external source.

Opposition politicians expressed concern – what would happen if the expected 26% of total budget (20 billion Birr) to come from foreign sources didn’t happen.

“The 20 Billion Birr is little of the total pledged money we have made sure will land. There is zero chance this might fail,” the premier said.

Ethiopia is among the five nations of the world which are showing fast economic growth and its economy is seeing double digit growth consecutively for the past few years in a row.

The approved budget was prepared and distributed based on country’s 5-year development strategy, inflation control measures and the expected 10.4 % average economic growth, it was indicated.

(ST)