The two countries, Ethiopia and Germany, have made a grant agreement to be applied for the growth and competitiveness program and other related activities in Ethiopia amounting to €100 million.
The relationship between Ethiopia and Germany has been in good diplomatic interactions throughout different times. The earliest contacts between the two countries, Ethiopia and Germany, dates back to the first half of the seventeenth century.
The current deal is almost an extension of this healthy diplomatic tie and counts the The contract was executed by top officials of the two countries. In line with this Mr. Admasu Nebebe, who is State Minister of Finance in Ethiopia and Mrs. Brita Wagner, who is an Ambassador of Germany to Ethiopia concluded the signing of the agreement.
The grant is supposed to be distributed to different development agendas in Ethiopia. Accordingly, it will mainly assist the Ethiopia’s current reform agenda for changeover to a different and new model of economic development that is expected to be a strongly oriented agenda on private sector development. It is, therefore, believed that by improving the current private oriented framework conditions for foreign direct investments and for improved and developed access to multifaceted financial services for local and foreign private companies.
Furthermore, the funding by the government of Germany will also be used for the second phase of the growth and competitiveness program and avail finance for the reform oriented expenditures through the budget support. This is one of the main issues in the pipeline of the current reform agendas in Ethiopia.
Corona virus (COVID-19) is also one of the precaution agendas to be addressed in this grant signing ceremony since it is the critical issue that is challenging the world. As a result, due to the current global outbreak of Corona virus (COVID-19), the signing ceremony was held through a virtual procedure to ensure the recommendation of WHO with regard to social distancing.
As it is known, more than 300,000 situations of COVID-19 have now been reported to the international coordinating agency, WHO. This reporting covers almost every country in the world and the pandemic is accelerating. As per the report of the WHO, the virus took 67 days from the very initial day of the report case to come to 100,000 cases. However, it took only11 days for the second 100,000 reported cases and just only 4 days for the third 100,000 cases.
