What we do
Ethiopia joined the Fund on December 27, 1945 (as the first African member). Since then, the country has benefited through from all three types of assistance the Fund provides to its members - namely surveillance on a yearly basis, balance of payments support, and technical assistance. Ethiopia's voting power in the Fund as of May 21, 2007 was about 0.07 percent.
The latest annual economic surveillance mission took place between February 23 - March 9, 2007. The following are links to the staff report and statistical appendix:
- 2007 Article IV consultation: staff report (I will provide the link when available)
- 2007 Article IV consultation: statistical appendix(I will provide the link when available)
Regarding the balance of payments support, although there is no any financial assistance program with Ethiopia at the moment, the IMP provided the following balance of payments support programs to Ethiopia since it started its market oriented economic reform in 1992:
- SDR100.28 million was drawn from the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility that was approved on March 22, 2001.
- SDR29.49 million was disbursed out of the SDR88.47 million approved under the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility on October 11, 1996.
- SDR49.42 million was disbursed from the Structural Adjustment Facility approved on October 28, 1992.
Debt Relief
Ethiopia received a total of about US$6 billion debt relief from HIPC in 2004 and MDRI in 2006, which brought the debt sustainability situation of the country into a very good shape. The IMF totally cancelled Ethiopia's debt amounting to about US$161 million at the beginning of 2006. It is the only multilateral institution to provide debt relief on a stock reduction basis to Ethiopia. In its latest Staff visit to the country, the Fund also produced jointly with the World Bank the current debt sustainability analysis (DSA) of the country.
Through the technical assistance channel, the government of Ethiopia and the Fund are doing their level best in providing international standard quality statistical data in all areas. Real sector and balance of payments are among those that the Fund and government are working closely towards improving the quality of Ethiopia's statistics. The Fund also makes available its professional experts to Ethiopia on the areas of Bank Supervision, Payment Systems, Public Finance Management and Tax Reform Policies. The Fund also works closely in collaboration with other donors towards this end.