Ethiopia received a “Star Reformer Award” from the World Bank Group for stellar performance on investment policy reform, promotion and its effective foreign direct investment (FDI) related reforms and resulting success.
In granting such a prestigious international recognition to Ethiopia, the World Bank appreciated the high-level political commitment the government of Ethiopia has demonstrated towards FDI attraction and facilitation through the realization of targeted policy reforms.
A high-level delegation of the government of Ethiopia, led by Dr. Arkebe Oqubay, received the award at the World Bank Group Investment Competitiveness Forum held in Vienna on October 25, 2017.
According to the World Bank Group, conventional international indicators used for measuring reforms around the ease of doing business by small and medium firms do not capture the transformational investment policy and promotion reforms that can enhance flow of FDI.
The “Star Reformer Award” thus aims to increase the visibility of such transformational reforms and showcase success stories realized by committed governments such as that of Ethiopia.
Such an award forms the highest level of international recognition to the tireless effort of the Government of Ethiopia in attracting and facilitating transformational investments into Ethiopia.
This is testament yet that Ethiopia is rightly positioned to realize its vision of becoming a leading manufacturing hub in Africa by 2025.
Several strategic reforms have been put in place by the government of Ethiopia to attract leading manufactures to Ethiopia and enhance their competitiveness of which the key ones include: development of industrial parks with a plug-and-play environment; design of legislation that regulate and facilitate industrial park programs; formulating targeted and sector-specific incentive instruments and other government support measures; as well as implementation of targeted and proactive investors recruitment.
Such efforts are already cementing into results. As confirmed by UNCTAD (Investment Report, 2017) Ethiopia has become one of the largest recipients of FDI in Africa registering a 46% growth from the previous year.
Source: Fana Broadcasting
