A street vendor around Debrezeit Road steadily walks a crossing bridge balancing his locally made plastic water cans. The shortage of foreign currency has increasingly challenged the 4,000 local plastic manufacturers in the country who require significant chemical inputs. A recent restriction on the use of partialized letters of credit to import materials has fueled a rising panic across the manufacturing landscape. As nearly half of the industrial input for most manufacturing plants in the country relies on the import of materials, the fate of the industrial sector is intimately tied to the country's forex status.

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