Ethiopia attracts $500 million Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) during the first quarter of the country’s current fiscal year according to the investment commission of Ethiopia.
The FDI declined by 20 per cent compared to the amount it attracted in 2019 in the same period due to the impact of the covid-19 according to Lilise Neme, the Commissioner of Ethiopian Investment Commission.
According to Lilise, 42 per cent are registered to invest in manufacturing, 47 per cent in service and 11 per cent are in agriculture sectors.
The commissioner added that the $500 million FDI registered in the three months in the face of a pandemic is promising and considered a victory. She also noted that most of the FDI is from China.
Despite Turkey, China and India being among the top FDI sources in Ethiopia, only one Chinese company appeared in the list of top 200 taxpayers awarded by Ethiopia a few weeks ago.
She also added that the Commission has been supporting the companies and assessing the contributions of the firms in terms of tax, employment, among others while commenting on if her office is assessing the contributions of the FDI to tax income in the country.
“Investment Commission will not only be in the implementation of the investment projects but also the contributions of the investment to the society and the priority they give to the community where they are investing,”
Lilise also said that assessing tax payments of the investments is also part of the activities the Commission is engaged in.
According to Lilise, the Commission has also assisted 46 investment projects to move to the implementation phase and 36 other to operational phases in the last three months. In the same period, the investments have created jobs to 16,659 people of which close to 11,000 jobs were created in industrial parks.
This comes after Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced that Ethiopia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2019 increased to 3.375 per cent surpassing $100 billion for the first time.
The GDP growth of the economy last year registered a 6.1 per cent economic growth, Industry registered 9 per cent growth and service sector registered 9.3 per cent, while the mining sector registered 91 per cent growth.
