IPDC is working to ease challenges facing industrial parks

ADDIS ABABA – Parks and concerning stakeholders said easing hurdles facing the parks is important to make the industrial parks productive and competent abroad.

Economic growth in Ethiopia is progressing at an impressive rate, where industrial parks are satisfying the interest of international investors in the country’s economy. Attracting FDI is at the core of Ethiopia’s industrialization strategy, which is supported at the highest level and in particular by the Prime Minister.

To that end, Ethiopia’s investment policy has been reformed at least four times over the past 20 years, making the country increasingly open to FDI. Since its establishment in 2014 industrial parks created hundreds of thousand jobs permanently and temporarily chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Industrial Parks Development Corporation (IPDC), Lelise Name said.

The government of Ethiopia constructed twelve industrial parks across the country and seven of them are operational. Construction of industrial parks beyond attracting FDI and foreign currency is an important area to create jobs for the citizens wide. The seven operational industrial parks created over 50 thousand permanent and 35 thousand temporary jobs.

The CEO stated that challenges facing some industrial parks are lack of access to water and power supply. The industrial parks found across the country are striving to eco industry and many works are underway. From among this using the waste products, making the greenery of the industrial park by planting 10 to 50 thousand trees each, are making them energy efficient to save power and the like.

Deputy CEO of the IPDC Amare Asgedom said that in line with its success in creating jobs and attracting FDI to the county lots of challenges are facing the parks. Among the challenges facing the sector are finding the right employee with the required knowledge and skill has been difficult because the benefits package is not competitive enough to attract talented and experienced workers.

Experience in the industrial park operation and management skill is ^{an infant} and, lack of sustainable capacity building scheme for operators. In addition, delayed response from the city administration and absence of standard guidelines percentage of land proposition are among the challenges.