IMF worried over growing debts by state enterprises, limited room for the private sector
Little appears to have changed in the views of those at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about Ethiopia’s macroeconomic performance. Disclosing its latest conclusion, on September 30, 2015, the assessment and recommendations of the IMF executive board for Ethiopia is the “same ol’ same ol’,” despite an unusually brief report with a couple of omissions from its predecessors. The verdict is that growing at 8.7pc, Ethiopia’s economic performance remains “buoyant,” a word with connotations of “light-heartedness”, which executive board members used, changing the tone from “robust,” the term used in their previous assessments, implying vigour in the economy over the years. The size of the economy grew from 877 billion Br in 2013 to 1.2 trillion Br last year, largely due to “prudent fiscal and pro-poor growth” policies the government has been following, according to the IMF. Yet, it warns that the economy faces risks from “rising domestic and external vulnerabilities,” again looking