ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia will start setting up a new industrial park in September and will expand another at a total cost of $250m, an official said, part of efforts to shift away from farming and become a hub for textiles and other industries.
The Horn of Africa nation aims to attract investors who are moving some manufacturing from China and other Asian markets, where costs are rising. Ethiopia offers cheap labour and fast improving power supply, transport and other infrastructure.
Luring new industry is seen as vital to maintaining high growth rates in Ethiopia’s still largely agrarian economy. The economy has expanded annually by double digits in the past decade and is forecast to grow by 8 percent or more this year.
Yaregal Meskir, deputy director general of the Ethiopian Industrial Development Zones Corporation, said plans were being finalised to expand the existing Bole Lemi Industrial Zone, on the southern outskirts of the capital, while a new industrial hub was planned at Kilinto, 30km further south.
“We have witnessed many investors have come to acquire sheds and land and there is a long queue,” he said. “We prefer labour-based industries like garment manufacturing and shoe manufacturing for exports.”
After selecting a designer, he said building Bole Lemi phase two and the Kilinto Industrial Zone would start in September.
A third of the 156-hectare Bole Lemi site was developed at a cost of 2.5bn birr ($127.5m), financed by the state, in the first phase and has attracted Korean garment-maker Myungsung Textile Company and Taiwan’s George Shoe Corporation. The Kilinto zone will cover 243 hectares.
Both the expansion work and new site would be financed by a $250m World Bank loan, Yaregal said. The industrial parks are central to Ethiopia’s plans to build an industrial base, with textiles and garments seen as a key sector, in part because the country benefits from the US AGOA trade pact allowing duty-free exports to the US market. The industrial zones offer land for factories at $1 per square metre a month, tax holidays for up to seven years and customs and other services on site for those investing in the nation of about 90 million people, officials say.
“Ethiopia has developed a strategy that gives priority to certain industries,” Taddese Haile, State Minister of Industry, said. “The aim is to see Ethiopia as a globally-known cluster for textiles and garment products.” Another three manufacturing hubs are planned across the country in the next decade, including a Special Economic Zone in the eastern town of Dire Dawa of 3,000 to 20,000 hectares. Reuters
