Addis Ababa: Ethiopia’s Finance Minister, Ahmed Shide, met with representatives from the International Finance Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) on the sidelines of the 2024 World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings.
The high-level Ethiopian delegation, led by Minister Ahmed Shide, had fruitful exchanges with IFC’s Managing Director Makhtar Diop and MIGA’s Vice President, Ethiopis Tafara on Ethiopia’s homegrown macroeconomic reform and ways to deepen strategic collaboration for private sector development.
The meetings discussed Ethiopia’s efforts and reforms to boost private sector investments, including recent opening of the retail, financial and other sectors to international investors.
Ahmed briefed the counterparts on the implementation of the homegrown macroeconomic reform and the positive early signs of progress, including positive business sentiment from private investors.
The Minister expressed the government’s commitment to further deepen efforts to boost private sector
investment, including in the energy, manufacturing, logistics, and telecom sectors with the aim to foster sustainable growth.
The two agencies commended Ethiopia’s efforts to create an enabling environment for investment while underscoring the importance of sustained efforts required to further improve the investment climate and unlock the full potential of private sector-led development.
The Minister requested the two agencies to scale up efforts to support private investments in Ethiopia taking into consideration the current favorable macroeconomic environment established for the private sector.
IFC’s Managing Director Maktar has affirmed his commitment to continue leveraging IFC’s technical support and mobilization of resources to support development endeavors in Ethiopia and expressed readiness to explore options in financing the new airport project development as well as rural development and agriculture initiatives in collaboration with other development partners.
Both IFC and MIGA expressed readine
ss and commitment to mobilize additional resources by leveraging all the different instruments, including the recently streamlined guarantees scheme available for the private sector.
The parties agreed to work closely to strengthen the partnerships, leverage more resources, and to jointly organize a high-level Foreign Direct Investment Roundtable workshop in Addis Ababa around January 2025.
Source: Ethiopian News Agency