Ethiopia’s
dependence on foreign capital to finance budget deficits and a five-year
investment plan is unsustainable, said Ken Ohashi,
the World Bank’s country
director for the Horn of Africa
nation.
The
government plans to borrow at least 398.4 billion Ethiopian birr ($23.6
billion) from home and abroad to fund the five-year growth plan, with an
additional 75.4 billion birr to finance fiscal deficits over the same period.
“I can’t see
it’s sustainable short of discovering huge oil reserves, essentially an
unexpected windfall,” Ohashi said in an interview in
the capital, Addis Ababa, yesterday. “I don’t see how they can sustain such an
aggressive investment plan without getting into serious problems.”
Ethiopia,
Africa’s biggest coffee producer and second-most populous nation, needs to
boost its savings rates to finance the investment plans or risk overheating an
economy where inflation accelerated to 29.5 percent in April from 25 percent
the month before, Ohashi said. It also needs higher
exports to repay the foreign loans.
“If you’re
not as a nation saving enough, you are dependent on foreign capital or other
means of financing investment in an unhealthy, unsustainable way,” Ohashisaid.“That’s
the sort of trap they seem to be falling into.”
Plans to lift
the savings rate to 15 percent of gross domestic product by July 2015 from 5
percent will be hindered if inflation continues to accelerate, Ohashi said.
“If you allow
inflation to get out of hand and real interest rates to become hugely negative
you totally take away the incentive to save,” he said.
The
government-set minimum deposit rate is currently 5 percent, a sixth of the
inflation rate. Without domestic savings, foreign debts will expand.
“On debt
there is a danger,” Ohashi said. “If this public
investment-led growth at some point really stumbles or stagnates for a while
then all these debt equations could unravel.”
The need to
repay foreign debts and rising imports could also push down the local currency,
the birr, which has lost 41 percent of its value against the dollar since the
start of 2009, boosting inflation.
A joint International
Monetary Fund and World Bank study in May 2010 found that Ethiopia’s debt
rose to 14 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, according to the Finance
Ministry website. The ratio of debt to exports will reach about 133 percent
this year, it said.
Private
Industry
Ethiopia’s
economic growth may slow to 6 percent in the fiscal year to July 7, 2012, from
7.5 percent this year, the IMF said on June 1. The estimate for 2010-11 is
below the government’s projection of 11.4 percent. IMF data show the economy
has expanded an average of 11 percent over the past seven years.
Ethiopia
operates a mixed economy that encourages foreign investment while state
enterprises dominate or monopolize key industries such as telecommunications,
banking and power generation.
Recent state
interventions in the market are discouraging private industry, according to Ohashi.
“I do worry
that without the private sector expanding much more vigorously then rapid
growth is not likely to be sustainable and if that’s the case then all these
debt balances could go out of control,” he said.
