This report addresses two questions: what explains Ethiopia’s growth acceleration?; and how can it be sustained? In brief, the authors find that Ethiopia’s rapid economic growth, concentrated in agriculture and services, was driven by substantial public infrastructure investment and supported by a conducive external environment.
... See More + To sustain high growth, three policy adjustments are presented: identifying sustainable ways of financing infrastructure, supporting private investment through credit markets, and tapping into the growth potential of structural reforms.
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This paper estimates the effect of government investment on private investment in a sample of 39 low-income countries. Fluctuations in a predetermined component of disbursements on loans from official creditors to developing country governments are used as an instrument for fluctuations in public investment.
... See More + The analysis finds evidence of "crowding in": an extra dollar of government investment raises private investment by roughly two dollars, and output by 1.5 dollars. To understand the implications for the return to public investment, a CES production function with public and private capital as inputs is calibrated. For most countries in the sample, the returns to government investment exceed the world interest rate. However, for some countries that already have high government investment rates, the return to further investment is below the world interest rate.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6781 FEB 01, 2014
Over the past decade, Ethiopia has achieved high economic growth, averaging 10.7 percent per year. In 2012, Ethiopia was the 12th fastest growing economy in the World.
... See More + If the country can continue its historically impressive growth performance, it could potentially reach middle income status by 2025. This, in turn, may require an adjustment in economic policy to phase in the private sector as an additional engine of growth. Moreover, Ethiopia needs to make progress on two related important fronts: enhancing domestic savings, and, resolving the bottlenecks of the trade logistics system. This Second Ethiopia economic update, prepared in collaboration with the Government of Ethiopia, offers policy guidance on how to move forward. Chapter one discusses Ethiopia's growth strategy, which emphasizes a strong expansion of public investment. This model has delivered impressive results, although the underlying macro policy mix highlights important challenges going forward suggesting that an adjustment to strategy may be warranted. One policy challenge relates to raising sufficient domestic savings to finance one of the highest public investment rates in the world, as discussed in chapter two. Another challenge relates to strengthening the competitiveness of the economy, to boost the lagging export performance, and attract foreign direct investment. Ethiopia's trade logistics system is a key constraint in this regard, as highlighted in chapter three.
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Since 2004 (Ethiopian Fiscal Year (EFY) 1997), Ethiopia has experienced strong and generally broad-based real economic growth of around 10.6 percent on average between then and 2011.
... See More + Growth over the last nine years was far beyond the growth rates recorded in aggregate terms for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which on average only reached 5.2 percent, less than half of Ethiopia's average real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate during that period. Inspired by the East Asian experiences for a comparison of selected indicators and policies of Ethiopia and China/Korea), growth was induced through a mix of factors including agricultural modernization, the development of new export sectors, strong global commodity demand, and government-led development investments. The initial double digits growth rates have now manifested slightly lower but remain at high single-digit levels. The economy is expected to stabilize at around seven to eight percent in 2012, largely owing to improved performance in the agriculture sector. GDP growth is likely to stay around that margin up until 2016 (EFY 2008) driven by rising foreign investment and exports (Economist Intelligence Unit 2012). High inflation persists, but is on a slightly decreasing trend. Economic growth brought with it positive trends in reducing poverty, in both urban and rural areas. Ethiopia follows a strategy of increasing exports to facilitate growth. This is appropriate given the currently limited size of its domestic market and it is consistent with the development experience of some of the recently successful countries, particularly in East Asia. Export of goods growth is to a good extent driven by volume growth across a variety of product groups, which indicates that this growth is a result of recent efforts to increase and diversify the export base. Overall export and import developments result in a significantly increased trade deficit by 43 percent, up from US$5.5 billion in 2010/11 to US$7.9 billion.
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Chinese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Africa is on the rise and Ethiopia is at the forefront of this trend. On request of the Government, the World Bank surveyed 69 Chinese enterprises doing business in Ethiopia with a 95-question survey in May/June 2012.
... See More + The survey covered various aspects of the foreign direct investment climate in Ethiopia, including infrastructure, sales and supplies, land, crime, competition, finance, human resources, and questions about general opportunities and constraints for doing business in Ethiopia. This report summarizes the results of survey and provides policy suggestions in light of the analysis; the report also provides some broader background of the expected benefits of FDI into Ethiopia as well as current policies and approaches to promote incoming investment. Addressing identified obstacles could help Ethiopia to take better advantage of foreign investors in order to accelerate the shift from a predominantly low-productivity agriculture-based economy towards a higher-productivity manufacturing and export-based economy. Experiences in successful countries around the world, and especially East Asia show that foreign investment is instrumental to facilitate such a structural transformation and to maintain sustained and broad-based economic development. This study recommends five main areas for policy adjustments to facilitate foreign investors coming into Ethiopia: adjust customs clearance procedures and trade regulations; facilitate currency convertibility and increase transparency of the exchange rate policy; improve tax administration consistency and efficacy; execute impartial labor regulation; and increase the supply and quality of skilled workers.
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