The Ethiopian export sector failed to meet its target earnings of USD 3.66 billion over the past nine months by securing only USD 2.1 billion. This year’s performance has shown a slight improvement of 4.3 percent when compared with the preceding year’s nine-month report.
The report by the Ministry of Trade indicated that looking at the plans, export earnings from most of the commodities ranging from oil seeds, coffee, horticulture and cereals have witnessed a low performance year.
From the total revenue, USD 1.58 billion was generated from agricultural commodities and the rest USD 332.5 million and USD 109.8 million came from the manufacturing and mining sectors, respectively.
Political unrest and illegal trading activities were listed as reasons behind the failed target by the ministry.
More than ever, contraband and illegal trading has cost the country to earn less in the export of minerals. In this regard, the sector has only managed to achieve 20 percent of its target.
The same holds true for export of construction materials, chemical inputs, textile, veterinary medicine, spices as well as live animals which performed below 50 percent.
Looking into revenues generated from agricultural commodities, USD 560.4 million was collected from coffee trading to international markets managing to achieve 78.3 percent of its initial plan.
In terms of volume, Ethiopia has managed to export 159,652.78 tons of coffee over the past nine-months.
Over the past reporting months, export market destination including China, Somalia, USA and Saudi Arabia were leading the list as the top export product customers. In this respect, export commodities worth of USD 208.85 million and USD 179.58 million were shipped to China and Somali, respectively.
For the current fiscal year, Ethiopia has a plan to earn USD 4.633 billion from export markets.
“We will work to fill the gaps and achieve our yearly plan,” Wondimu Felatee, communications director of Ministry of Trade, said.
