Yonas Abiye
1 February 2009
Addis Ababa — Government representatives on Friday rejected a world Bank report which claimed that Ethiopia was way behind its peers in the region in development of infrustructure.
A World Bank assessment that has been carried out by the Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) that mainly focused on the benchmarking of Ethiiopia's infrastructure development against African neighbours said that Ethiopia needed to invest five billion USD on yearly basis for a decade to bring it to an acceptable level.
Thus, infrastructure's contribution to growth and the institutional reform that is rquired in Ethiopia has been lagging as compared to other African countries except in the road sector, the bank said.
Infrastructure, particularly power infrastructure, is a major break on firm productivity.
This was revealed at a consultative stakeholder meeting to discuss the coutcomes of the assessement held at Ghion Hotel on Friday.
The assesment report was rejected by representatives in attendance of the workshop saying the assessment was not reflective of the objective reality in the country and not to be taken seriously.
The World bank study mainly assessed the development project carried out in the country up to year 2006, they said.
"The study focuses only on the activity carried out before or up to 2006. The government had been kept carrying out investment like in ICT sector after then," Debretsion....
ICT Agency Director General said.
"I am afraid this study could not be instrumental for policy maker," he added mentioning Woreda-net, school-net, telephone expansion in rural areas as instances of achievment to disprove the report.
He, however, admitted there is still "a very slow" internet service and network in the country.
Similarly, Gebrehiwot Agebab, Faculty Dean with AAU, on his part said he found the study with lotsof "limitations" such as failing to include recent development in hydro-power project.
"We have a huge hydropower projects which are on completion. These figures would be certainly changed in your findings had the study incorporated up to date information," he said.
The World Bank report ,on a brighter note, said Ethiopia has more growth to gain from the improving infrastructure.
The study indicates that the trunk road network in the the country was in adequate length, good quality but no evidence of over-paving.
The AICD has undertaken unprecedented data collection and analysis on the status of the main network infrastructure, including energy, information and communication technologies, irrigation, transport, and water and sanitation. The analysis encompasses public expenditure trends, future investment needs and sector performance review.
Meanwhile the road user charges is effective fuel levy at US$0.8 - 0.10 which is relatively low compared to maintenance needs of US$0.15 reliant on budget top-up.
"Maintenance funding still fall below technical norms, and this will worsen as current network age. But we see a half investment program represents huge and effort in GDP terms with strong focus on trunk network," Vivien Foster, Lead Economist with the World Bank said presenting the research findings.
Calculating the road network, she said, we find Ethiopia's road benchmarking in a low density but reasonably good quality network.
Speaking on the findings of transport sector, the researcher said, the Ethiopian air transport sector is one of the leading players in African air transport adding- "a success story resulting from strong political commitment and liberalization reforms." She also said in international service Ethiopia is one of Africa's top three carriers with safety rankings up to international benchmark meanwhile for further development to support tourism.
"Interior only 50% of larger cities have long runways compared with 65% for other Africa LICs." In water and sanitation sector, the study revealed that Ethiopia has extremely very low access to water but encouraging progress is being made.
In power sector, the research findings disclosed that the country is "highly under-developed power sector interims of generation capacity, power consumption, access and reliability.
"Large availability of low cost hydro-power resources with potential to become Africa's number two power exporter and raise significant earnings, its huge investment funding requirement could be raised," it said.
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