Vigorous Economic Reforms Led WB to Finance Ethiopia: Country Director

Addis Ababa October 02/2018 Ethiopia’s opening up and economic reforms have induced the World Bank Group (WBG) to boost up its partnership with Ethiopia and provide finance, WBG Country Director for Ethiopia Carolyn Turk said. In an exclusive interview with ENA, Country Director Turk said “this is an important moment in Ethiopia’s economic history. The country is opening up in sub-region and economically.” Stating the country is undertaking multitude reforms, Turk pointed out “we wanted to be a partner of the government as they go forward in design of the reforms and we can help finance these reforms.” The budget support is one in a series of operations as long as progress continues she said, adding “we will intense the finance support in the areas of maximizing finance for development, improving the environment for private sector development and investment climate, and improving transparency and citizen engagement.” Moreover, she stated that it is a good time for the World Bank to support the government with this extra support on proposals to reform state owned enterprises like telecom, energy and logistics. According to her, the WBG will work with the government in modernizing the financial sector, and making the banking sector more efficient as well as transparency and accountability of social and state enterprises. “So making the economy more efficient, more competitive, better able to generate exports, and better to be able to create jobs,” Turk stressed. High quality skills will increase the productivity competitiveness of the working force, she said, and added “with the150 million USD support for transforming TVET Ethiopia will become more competitive in an exporting environment.” Though it needs a work of several years, fully modernizing the financial sector, completing the on-going reforms of state owned enterprises, and sustainably enhancing efficiency of the enterprises are the challenges ahead, she indicated. The 1.35 billion USD budget and TVET skill transformation support operations bring WB total commitment to Ethiopia close to 12 billion USD.