World Bank team to help make stock market a reality

The World Bank Group announced that a team of experts would arrive next month to assist Ethiopia in the actualization of a capital market.
The World Bank already is providing technical support for a committee established under the Ministry of Finance to properly implement partial privatization of government enterprises.
In a summary of last year’s economic report and a prediction of the current one, economists stated that Ethiopia’s economy is expected to grow at 8 percent with stable economic conditions. One of the major reasons for this belief is the government’s decision not incur commercial debt which should improve the external debt payment. The economy is also expected to stabilize because new industrial parks have begun operating, inflation has gone down over the past three months and foreign currency reserve has increased.
The World Bank has given its first direct budgetary support since the 2005 election at the request of the government, where half of the 1.2 billion USD funding was given as a concessional debt and the rest as direct aid.
The pillars of the support includes: maximizing the government’s potential, investment and financial institutions simplifying doing business and supporting legal framework developments and accountability and transparency enhancement programs.
Carolyn (Carrie) Turk the Country Director for Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Sudan pointed to positive steps Ethiopia has taken in these three areas, such as opening the economy in Public-private partnerships, energy, telecom and logistics, computational law and investment law and working work with civil societies, and public enterprises.
“The support is given by the unanimous vote of our board members who supported the efforts Ethiopia is making to bring the fundamental policy, economic and social changes it embarked on,” said Carrie.
The country director stressed that there are fundamental reforms in the policy decisions which the WB is grateful to support. Some short-term reforms include, making the logistics sector more efficient to improve the foreign exchange reserve; and opening up the telecom, energy and airline sectors to privatization.
Long-term structural actions involve improving exports which should occur when the logistics sector is improved.