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Transcript: Ethiopia PMO Briefing To Foreign Media - 18th August 2022

August 18, 2022 Addis Ababa

PressBriefing Transcript of August 18, 2022

Good morning and welcome to today’s briefing.

As usual I’ll begin by key highlights of the Prime Minister’s engagements over the past week.

  1. Prime MinisterAbiy Ahmed’s Engagements
  2. GERD
  3. August 11th and 12th were monumental days for Ethiopia where Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed initiated the beginning of power generation of the second Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam turbine on the 11th and announcedthe successful 3rd filling of the dam on the 12th.
  4. The two early generator units have a combined capacity of 750 MW. And currently over 540 MW is being generated and injected to the grid
  5. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, duringthe commissioning of the SecondUnit, once againhas called upon Egypt and Sudan to continue the trilateral negotiations and work towards forging results through cooperation and mutual growth, reiterating that while work that that has been done to hold up to 22 billion metric cubic of water and generate power from two units, there has been no harm caused to the lower riparian countries as the bottom outlets are clear demonstrations of Ethiopia’s “no harm” principle.
  6. Green LegacyClosing
  7. August 14th marked the official closing of this year’s Green Legacy program with a ceremony held in Dire Dawa.
  8. The closing ceremony marked the conclusion of the four-year target of planting 20bil seedlings initiated in 2019 by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed
  9. As we recall,it is for the first time in Ethiopia’s history of afforestation and reforestation, that such a largescale landscape restoration initiative was launched and achieved more than what has been planned.
  10. Some remarkable resultsover the past four years include:
  11. Mushrooming of nurseries throughout the country from around 40,000when the initiative was launched to 121,000 by 2022
  12. Raising different species of seedlings in these nurseries with increasing emphasis on indigenous and high value types, like bamboo
  1. Free Trade Zone Launch
  2. On August 14th you wouldrecall that the Prime Ministerinaugurated the Dire Dawa Free Trade Zone.
  3. Prior to the inauguration, the Council of Ministers put into effect the draft policy document of the NationalSpecial Economic Zone which emphasizes that the contribution of international and regional trade links to the economic development of a country is important.
  4. The Council in its decisionrecognized that it is importantto create enablingconditions for our country to be an active participant and beneficiary as trade relations are rapidly expanding and developing.
  5. In this regard,in order i. to improvethe export tradesystem of our country, ii. to increase the attractiveness of foreign direct investment, iii. to enhance our export trade capacity and iv. to create wide employment opportunities in the sector, it was found important to establish a system for the expansionof dry ports and smoothlogistics services in the main trade corridors of Ethiopia;
  6. Hence the importance of the policythat allows for the establishment of special economic zones.
  7. The Dire Dawa Free Trade Zone inaugurated by the Prime Ministerlast Sunday:
  8. Covers an area of 150 sq. m in phase one and 4,000 sq. m land for future expansion
  9. Has a dedicated 20MW electric power supply
  10. Has a dedicatedwater supply
  11. Within close proximityto the Dire Dawa-Addis Ababahighway
  12. Is situated adjacentto the rail line connecting Addis Ababa and Djibouti
  13. Dire Dawa Dry portis within a 2.8 km distance
  14. Dire Dawa International Airport is withina 25.2km distance
  15. Has a locational advantage with two major port corridors of 348 km and 507 km, respectively, from the ports of Djibouti and Berbera.
  16. The services offered at the free trade zone range from value added logistics services to industrial & logistics estate rental which are complemented with public services and Government services at One stop service
  17. Overall Peaceand Security
  1. Humanitarian ResponseUpdates

Tigray

Amhara & Afar

  1. Peace Process

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