Previous Fiscal Year sees Two Billion USD in revenue for Ethiopia

By Muluken Yewondwossen

Ethiopia earned about 2 billion dollars this previous fiscal year. The export value is nearly half a billion dollars higher than last year’s performance.
Amakele Yilma, head of the corporate communication directorate at the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI), told Capital that the past year’s (2009/2010) performance has a 37% growth rate compared with the 2008/2009 fiscal year.

The value of Ethiopia’s exports during the 2008/09 fiscal year amounted to only 1.46 billion dollars, while the government had a target of 2.5 billion dollars - a billion dollars higher than the previous year.

In the 2008/09 fiscal year export performance was 2.1% lower than the previous year. In the 2007/08 fiscal year the country recorded 1.5 billion dollars from exports, which was a record amount.

According to Amakele, the government was scheduled to register 25% growth in exports every year. “But the last fiscal year performance has registered more than planned,” Amakele said.

In 2008/09 the country planned to generate about 2.5 billion dollars from exports, while the financial crises that occurred since mid 2008 has been influenced by the country’s export rate and the government’s measure on six major coffee exporters in the country which has also affected the foreign currency generation of the country.

Coffee accounted for 60 percent of Ethiopia’s foreign exchange revenue in 2007/2008 when it earned more than 525 million dollars from mostly high quality Arabica beans. But earnings slumped to just 375.8 million dollar in 2008/2009.
According to Amakele, the country’s foreign trade is led by coffee as usual, while gold exports have increased dramatically.
The last year oilseed exports followed the coffee performance, and gold, khat, flower, pulse, livestock and leather exports have gone after the oilseed export respectively.

CapitalEthiopia