Addis Ababa, 05 October, 2015(WIC) – Ethiopia is at a critical juncture to lay the foundation to become a middle income country via successful implementation of the goals set in the second Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP-II), President of the FDRE said.
In his speech aimed at showing the main focuses of the government this budget year to the first joint session of the House of People’s Representatives (HPR) and the House of Federation (HR), Dr. Mulatu Teshome, said GTP-II is aimed at tangibly transforming the major pillars of the economy and lay a strong base for the effort to transcend the country to a middle income level in 2025.
Even if the democratic system the government is building in the last couple of decades has achieved tangible outcomes, the government has understood that it is a critical time to effectively abate the bottlenecks on the ways to make the system further reach another level, the President noted.
Dr. Mulatu said the government has taken lessons from other successful developmental states to better perform the goals set with in the GTP-II. There shall be changes in the allocation on those who are going to execute government duties in various levels of the government ladder.
The country is expected to register economic growth by 11 percent in 2008, the President noted. The government has planned to make the budget deficit not to exceed 3 percent in the stated period, he added.
Dr. Mulatu underscored that the government shall work with utmost emphasis to narrow the gap in export and import balance this year. For this, new mineral resources would step by step be made to join the export market in the coming few years, he said.
As the government has planned to cover expenses for its major developmental projects by itself, it would work on attaining reforms in tax administration and hence collecting more tax in the stated period.
The government shall work to sustain strategies aimed at encouraging saving and the interest rate shall be reformed in such a way that would further encourage saving, he noted.
“This is a critical time to cruelly face rent seeking and corruption tendencies and respond to public woes. We will aggressively work to break the shells of rent seekers and corrupters,” the president remarked.
Dr. Mulatu stressed on the need to prevent the destabilizing works and terror agents of the government of Eritrea. If the Eritrean government is not going to show restraint from its terror acts, the government shall take actions that could enable to defend itself, he noted.