By Asrat Seyoum

The five-year strategic plan, dubbed the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP), was defended by both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance and Economic Development during the past two weeks. Early this week, the plan was floated for public discussion in Addis Ababa where people still held mixed opinions on the feasibility of the plan. Abera Alemayehu, 29, currently employed at a private bank, calls the 'transformation' a 'bluff.' He says that the plan, as it is presented in the various media outlets, in one’s right judgment, looks over-ambitious. “This time the architects have pushed it too far and it sounds like a strategy in a poker game, thought I am not sure who we are playing against,” he says jokingly.

An engineer by profession and a businessman, Markos Fekadu is on the other end of the opinion pool. He said that he did not have to look further to see that the segment of the plan is already in the pipeline. “I came across foreign companies wanting to get pieces of 2395 km of the railroad network project."

The above two are examples of just how divergent the views on the GTP could get. Even within small clusters of individuals that The Reporter talked to in the capital, opinions vary in such a way that it is almost impossible to group them in categories.

Two weeks ago Sofian Ahmed, Minister of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED) told reporters with a rare grin in his face that the country’s economic prospect within the coming five years was rosy.

The GTP incorporated bold plans to double the overall economy’s production, adding up into something close to a trillion birr, while the industrial sector is expected to take over the role of leading it. Energy, road, railway, telecom and water supply are set to furnish the country with an infrastructure facility never seen before in the country’s history, while it is sprinting towards the top three largest economies in the continent.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi at his press conference last week was a bit subtle about the claims. He said that the GTP was indeed ambitious but not beyond the realm of possibility. “Both the base case and the high case scenarios in the past were also dubbed ambitious, yet, at the end of the period, we attained 11 percent growth rate, which exceeds both of the case scenarios,” Meles said.

In the backdrop of such weeks of strategic discussion, the government’s call to the public to rally behind the plan was drawing different opinions. If the aggregation of such views is even possible, it looks like the business community is the group with relatively positive views on the plan. Fasil Arage, private businessman, says that the target in the plan was set to be ambitious deliberately in order to motivate growth. In the coming years, in one way or on other, Ethiopia is bound to change for the better, says Fasil. However, he bashes those who fritter away over precious time arguing about the feasibility of the plan. He says the architects of the plan are professionals and if they do want to set an ambitious plan, it will have a good reason.

On the other hand, the economic professionals that The Reporter talked to say that GTP, as it is at the moment was not fit for discussions. They note that to evaluate an economic strategy of such genre, one needs to understand the full assumption, resource base, human and financial capital requirements that the plan sought to employ. Tewodros Mekonen, holding M.Sc. in economics from AAU, Ethiopian Economic Association (EEA) Macro division, says that just like its predecessor, the Plan for Accelerated and Sustainable Development to End Poverty (PASDEP), this one also was not a plan that is on the ground. “As far as professional opinion is concerned, it is faulty to make discourse on the ambitious nature of the plan since the document does not contain any underlying conditions for the projections; hence nothing can be said to that end.

Tilahun Molla, M.Sc. in economics from Demark, shares this view. The way the document is presented offered nothing for professional discourse on the plan, he says. He said development theories show that economic growth was a cyclical phenomenon by its very nature. Even in the recent growth experiences of countries like Angola, where a natural resource, more specifically oil, has beeen discovered, the trend is few transitional years of boom followed by a more sustained, slower, growth rate for the rest of the period. He says that such is the natural growth trend, while, in the case of Ethiopia, it is a faster growth period, which is taking an abnormally long time, followed by another fast growth period, a trend that seems highly unnatural. Close to seven years now, the country is growing above 10 percent on average while GTP projected this growth rate to be only the base case scenario, below which the number will not fall. For the high case scenario, the number is expected to double (growth rate), which according to both of economists above, would be one of the highest records of growth in the world.

Tsegaye G. Kidan, also holding M.Sc. in economics from a university in Denmark, says that the GTP is not yet fully articulated to enable professional evaluations. For a plan to make sense, the primary basis of these plans should be fully known, which, he said, is information he did not have at the moment.

Other economic professionals approached by The Reporter, who opted to remain anonymous, suspect that the plan had other underlying assumptions that are not on the documents. They said that it is the sort of projection that countries which came across a lucrative natural resource would dare to make. Hence, it is better to wait for the by-sectoral breakdown of the plan before rushing to denounce it.

Early this week, a section of the public in the capital was summoned to discuss the plan. The Minister of Trade and Industry (MoTI), Girma Birru, and Mekonnen Manyazewal, the Minister of State in the MoFED, chaired the meeting at Ghion Hotel, which went on for three days from Monday to Wednesday. GTP was laid down on the discussion table with its long-term implications on people’s lives. However, the participants raised day-to-day concerns which have less to do with the five-year strategy and focused rather on the immediate municipal problems. Noise pollution in Addis Ababa, transportation shortage and so on were the centerpiece of the discussion. The municipality has its own strategic plan which was endorsed at the beginning of the fiscal year ended July7.

Some say that it is what should have been expected in the first place since the plan 'lacks details.' The targeted parameters ought to be explained a little bit further for the public to understand the plan and judge if it is doable or not.
Bulti Terfasa, senior expert at the private sector development hub (PSD) at Addis Ababa Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association (AACCSA), completely disagrees with the whole ‘it is feasible, not feasible’ dialogue. He says it is a national agenda, which should not be questioned. "We must, therefore, strive to attain it. The private sector is involved in the public forum held in Addis Ababa and we believe that the conversations should be how to benefit from the unprecedented growth that is to come in the next five year,." he says.

Tewodros, however, says that it is what has been exhibited in other developing countries, which had to pass though some what a similar trend in the past. Hence, the plan is useful only to stimulate the public and push the growth agenda, which might be working in the Ethiopian case as well.

EthiopianReporter