ADDIS ABABA — The recently designed leather strategy is of great significance to identify the sector's major constraints and help to come up with comprehensive solutions, the Manufacturing Industry Development Institute (MIDI) said.
MIDI Deputy Director General Seleshi Lema made the above remark yesterday while opening the National Ethiopian Highland Leather (Ethiopian Highland Leather) conference here yesterday.
Speaking at the occasion, Seleshi stated that tremendous efforts have been exerting tremendous efforts to develop the Ethiopian highland leather over the past several years. Ethiopian highland leather has also been tested in the international market with initial success with the support of partners, particularly JICA and being promoted among global customers.
"The meeting is expected to scale up the potential and address the sector's impediments and shed the lights on the means to tackle the problem and serve as a roadmap for further marketing and promotion."
The director general further noted that in order to scale up the initiative further, the Ethiopian highland leather certification needs to be addressed. The leather sector growth and development remains stagnant particularly over the last few years in terms of export earnings. Conversely, promising performance is witnessed in other economic indicators including import substitutions and job creation.
Recognizing the sector's low export performance, the Ministry of Industry and MIDI recently designed a leather strategy along with a comprehensive action plan to reinstate and enhance its role and contribution in the overall economic performance. The strategy identified major constraints which challenged the leather sector growth and development alongside the value chain particularly the quality and availability of raw hives and skin, technology, inputs, market diversification and others, Seleshi elaborated.
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"It is not only identifying problems, but the strategy has come up with identification of possible comprehensive solutions specifying the role and responsibility of stakeholders and parties in the leather value chain."
For his part, CBI, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs Expert Jan Willem Richeleman stated that collaborative efforts would contribute to push forward the leather sector's performance. Developing EHL certification is very critical to promote the leather products to penetrate the global market. The CBI identified EHL as high value added products and instrumental to Ethiopia to access new markets.
The Ethiopia Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association in collaboration with the Ethiopian Leather Development Association, MIDI, CBI (SNV) and JICA organized a conference that aims to utilize Ethiopia's enormous highland leather potential.
