New Council to Advise on Budget

The Ministry of Finance established a 12-member public finance management advisory council that will facilitate government finance administration.

The Council includes two members from Addis Abeba University, five experts from the private finance sector, one NGO representative, a central bank official and two civil servants from the Ministry, to which it will be accountable.

Established two months ago and chaired by Eyob Tekalign (PhD), state minister for Finance, the Council has three working groups: accounting and reporting International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS); internal audits; and modernisation of the finance sector.

This comes as the country’s external debt climbed to almost a third of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the past fiscal year, compared to 18pc six years ago. With public and private debt standing at 61pc of GDP, the International Monetary Fund stresses that while liquidity risks are elevated, the public debt remains unsustainable.

In the first half of the current fiscal year, disbursement from multilateral institutions stood at 40.6 billion Br, more than double the amount in the previous fiscal year; and 17 billion Br was disbursed by bilateral partners, a 42pc drop from the same period a year ago.

Close to half of the disbursements were in the form of concessional loans that bear low-interest rates and long repayment periods.