40 Percent of Investment Land Remains Unused – Deputy PM

May 6, 2012 - Deputy PM Hailemariam Desalegn disclosed that 40 percent of land set aside for investment purposes remains unused, according to Capital. He revealed this at a discussion held between several hundred Ethiopian Diaspora members and the government on April 24 at the Ethiopian Civil Service University.

The numbers indicate that, over the last two decades, 5,400 investors who were either Ethiopians or members of the Diaspora community had each appropriated plots ranging from 500 to 5,000hct mostly in sparsely populated lowland areas of Ethiopia.

Hailemariam Desalegn, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, said the government is looking into ways of addressing the problems faced by Ethiopian investors with implementing their projects.

Recently the Ethiopian government allocated another 3.6 million hectares of land for commercial farming open to both local and international investors of which about half a million hectares have already been prepared.

Responding to criticisms by government officials that the Diaspora investors seem to lack the capacity to execute the projects they took, some participants complained that they have been hampered by the pervading corruption of certain government institutions, bureaucracy and the lack of transparency that comes with it. Among the major grievance areas for the participants were in the areas of the land policy, customs, real estate and banking services.

Diaspora are also concerned about the lack of enforcement by the MoFA directorate dealing with the Diaspora engagement and participation, when investors complain about difficulties related to their investment, especially outside the city.

MoFA recently announced that it had no intention of forming a ministry to exclusively deal with Ethiopia’s estimated two million strong Diaspora population. Hailemariam, while acknowledging the difficulties mentioned by the participants, said the problems could only be solved when worked on together. He noted that local officials from regional states Diaspora offices have also come to the meeting to hear their grievances and find ways to solve them.

Regarding duty-free import of household goods, the Deputy PM was adamant that the issue of tax free imports of cars for the Diaspora was a closed matter and had been abused when it was briefly put into force for investment purposes a couple of years ago, as well as being unfair to  residents of Ethiopia investing and working here.               

Hailemariam further said the government has designated seven areas as “pillars of growth” for the country in which he said the Ethiopian Diaspora can participate. He pointed  Energy, Industry and Communications as preeminent ones.

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