Government moves to address foreign exchange shortages

The Ethiopian Government has unveiled significant economic reforms aimed to ease the country's pressing foreign currency shortage. ‘We have now designed a comprehensive reform strategy to sustain and advance the economic growth and development in the country,’ said Finance Minister Ahmed Shide. He said foreign exchange was a ‘major bottleneck and we are working comprehensively to address that’. A report on the IoL site added that he said ‘the privatisation we are embarking on will contribute significantly to that and bring significant foreign exchange’. He said his government was also working on ways of broadening the remittance flow into the East African country from the rest of the world. Yinager Dessie, the governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia, said productivity in the agriculture sector ‘has not been to the expected level’. The government recently announced plans to partially privatise its major state-owned enterprises as a solution to the serious shortage of foreign currency.