Ethiopian Reporter - English Version - Foreign investment dominating in Oromia region

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Foreign investment dominating in Oromia region

Saturday, 17 May 2008

By Hayal Alemayehu

Foreign investment is dominating in Oromia region and is accounting for about two-thirds of the total investment capital registered during the last seventeen years, according to data compiled by the Oromia Investment Commission.

Foreign projects took over 63 percent of the total 97.6 billion birr investment capital registered during the last seventeen years in the Oromia region, the balance accounting for domestic investment, according to the data.

The trend looks set to continne in that direction with the chunk investment capitals registered in the region during the first nine months of the current Ethiopian fiscal year belonging to foreign projects.

Of the total 32.9 billion birr investment capital registered during the first nine months of the current budget year, 23.5 billion birr (71 percent) account for foreign projects.

Domestic investment in the region, however, seems to have outdone the foreign one merely because it involves much larger projects in terms of numbers.

During the last seventeen years, a total of 5,966 investment projects were licensed in the Oromia region, where 4819 (80 percent) are domestic. Nonetheless, in terms of the investment capital registered under these projects, foreign investments took the loin's share.

The same thing holds true for the first nine months of the current Ethiopian fiscal year.

The data indicates that a total of some 1386 investment projects were licensed under the Oromia Investment Commission, 1097 of which are domestic, accounting for over 79 percent of the total.

Despite their sheer number compared to the foreign ones, these domestic investment projects, however, weigh much lesser in terms of investment capital when compared to foreign investment, which signifies their dominance.

According to the data, the manufacturing sector constituted the lion's share of foreign investment capitals in the Oromia region during the last seventeen years, followed by the agriculture, real estate, and hotel and tourism sectors, respectively.

The data indicated that over 31.2 billion birr investment capital was registered under foreign manufacturing projects during the last seventeen years. Investment capitals registered under foreign agriculture, real estate, and hotel and tourism projects, stood at 21.4 billion birr, 5.6 billion birr and 1.7 billion birr, respectively, during the same period.

The total investment capital registered under foreign projects in the Oromia region during the last seventeen year was slightly over 62.3 billion birr.

In terms of the number of projects, agriculture took the major portion of foreign investments followed by manufacturing, hotel and tourism, and construction sectors as indicated in the data. Some 566 agricultural, 64 hotel and tourism, and 38 construction foreign projects were licensed during the last seventeen years in the region.

Overall, some 1,147 foreign projects were registered during the stated years in the region, according to the data.

During the same years, a total of some 4,819 domestic projects were licensed in same region, with a total investment capital of 35.4 billion birr.

The major areas of domestic investments in the region during the last seventeen years included the manufacturing, agricultural and real estate sectors, respectively. Domestic investment capitals registered under the manufacturing, agricultural, and real estate projects during the last seventy years in the region stood at 16.8 billion birr, 6.3 billion birr, and 3.4 billion birr, respectively.

During the first nine months of the current Ethiopian fiscal year, a total of 289 foreign projects with investment capitals of 23.5 billion birr were licensed in the Oromia region. During the same period, a total of 1097 domestic projects with investment capitals of over 9.4 billion birr were registered.

The manufacturing sector took the lion's share of the total investment capitals, (both the foreign and the domestic), which stood at 16.8 billion birr, during the stated nine months. The agricultural, real estate, and mining and energy sectors were the other major sectors which registered 6.4 billion birr, 5 billion birr and 1.6 billion birr investment capital during the reported period, respectively.

Over 76 thousand hectares of land had been requested by the project owners to implement the investment projects registered during the first nine months of the fiscal years, the data indicated.

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