Successes of the FDRE Government

                                                                               Dawit Miteku

The FDRE government which took over the country along with its eternal enemy has been fighting with this embarrassing issue for years by declaring ‘winning the fight against poverty for us is an existential issue’. The anti-poverty campaign waged by the incumbent government that emanates from its developmental and democratic outlook which gives priority and attention to the peoples’ pressing problems, is achieving great results in its fight.

As a result millions of fathers, mothers the young and the women are entering the millennium by shrugging-off the horrible poverty veil from their shoulder. The FDRE government’s formulated policies and strategies; which are responsible for our country’s current miracle fast and sustainable development.

The FDRE government for recording positive results with regards to alleviating its people out of poverty and backwardness by through its own formulated policies and strategies ,there are some neo- liberal extremists with their our  hidden agenda who are involved in blackening this achievement.

These forces instead of mentioning the country’s fast-growing investment sector, they choose to propagate that the government’s unwillingness to make the banking, telecommunication and electrical sectors open to foreign investors as hopeless.

Of course telling about these extremists forces’; who have long been criticizing the Ethiopian government effort out of their desire to impose their own preferred ideological agendas, exploits to my dear readers is like “teaching a hen how to lay eggs”; and the reference the local idiom ‘‘you can only be like your home, not like your neighbors’’ has to this situation.

As it can be recalled these forces had been putting pressure and trying to forcefully privatize the country’s banks, telecommunication, electricity, Airlines, City water and utilities cheaply. Also they have exerted pressure for land, a natural resource of the people, to be sold and transferred. On top of this, these forces have tried to hinder our progress by clearly hinting at halting our country from getting foreign loan and aid that will help fulfill its developmental aspirations - although it has been to no avail.

In addition to this, they have been for years propagating that Ethiopia will not have an economic growth, if it doesn’t follow these neo liberal politico-economic thinking - although the opposite have been true. Since the Ethiopian government understood this out look’s of ‘everything has to be left to the private sector, and the government should not interfere except to make sure rule of law is upheld’ it took serious measures not to delve into it.

It was able to withstand the heavy pressure made by the neo-liberal forces; which intended weaken the role of the government, and instead established a strong developmental government.

It’s a fact that the government by withstanding, these forces’ pressure to sell land and their “prophecy” that agriculture based development strategy leads to failure, doesn’t go with the country’s reality, it has instead put the country in a rapid and sustainable growth by formulating and executing its own developmental path.

As it’s known, we are seeing miraculous progress in our country in these 25 years. With this, it has been able to debunk the neo-liberalism thinking of government should not interfere in the economy. This is why, when these forces under the umbrella of neo- liberalism ideology were hit by economic crisis, our country was able to continue with its own rapid economic growth.

What we can understand from this and what other countries of the world has to contemplate is that they can grow outside of the neo- liberalism thinking by formulating policies and strategies that take their own hard realties into account, just like Ethiopia’s developmental path.

Thus, it’s important to understand why these ideology extremists want to impose their hidden agenda by highlighting issues that nadir the country’s real investment situation. As it’s known, the Ethiopian government by spending on the country’s public infrastructure, by encouraging potential investors by facilitating various incentives and by opening its doors, and by presenting the country’s attractive realities in various international arenas, it’s attracting many investors into the country. As a consequence, the number of foreign investors that are involved in various investment sectors especially in agriculture, manufacturing and industrial sectors is increasing as time goes by.

As it’s known, for the last 25 years there have been many socio-economic development policies, strategies and programs formulated in order help our country break free from poverty and backwardness, and improve the peoples’ living conditions step-by-step.

And their success can be seen by comparing today’s Ethiopia with the one that was 25 years ago-as the idiom ‘seeing is believing’ entails. So, in this article I’ll try to walk you, my dear readers, through our country’s economic growth of the last ten years. In order to probe into our country’s last ten years economic growth, its process and outcome, the ten years performance before that should be raised here. This is because that period has its own irreplaceable role for the current successful run of the economy.

As any reader of this article can understand, the economic growth of our country was garnered during which the world is hit with financial crisis. The fact that at the time when the neo-liberal institutions were hit by huge loses and their governments went for subsidizing them, in a way that contradicts their adhered ideology, while our country’s economy showed no sign of regress goes out to show the soundness of the policies and strategies curved by our government and how much they benefitted the wider public step-by-step through their outcomes.

Thus, it should be understood that the same path of the government that has made the public beneficiary of the economic development is in play here when we talk about changing the lives of the government public servants lives for the better as much as possible.

I think the salary increment and benefits should be looked from this light. And this action of the government, which is aimed at increasing the benefits of the public servants, will help the people get their deserved developmental fruits from the government.    

To sum up, the developmental and democratic FDRE government by following a sound economic policy that’s in touch with the country’s realties, is not only changing the poverty and backwardness image associated with the country, it has been able to be taken as a benchmark for the world, as result of the economic progress it gained in the last 15 years.