The Ethiopian government has officially put an offer to at least 12 global companies to comply financial and technical proposals in order to be part of power production and operations in the country. This is in order to take the privatization process to another level.
According to the Minister of Finance (MoF), Ahmed Shidie, who conferred his Ministry’s 10 month report before the House of People’s Representatives, a useful study is being undertaken to implement the public-private partnership framework to grant the private sector to step in selected energy and transportation projects which used to be considered as a strategic area fully controlled by the government.
The board of PPP is presently undertaking assessment of projects which includes six solar projects and three hydroelectric projects. Further to that, two projects named Gad and Deucheto Solar Energy projects which have a combined capacity of 250MW are in the pipeline with an estimated cost of US $265m. Request for Proposal (RPF) has also been prepared for Mekele, Wolenchiti and Worarso Solar Projects which generate a sum of 500MW of solar energy with a joint project outlay of US $529m.
It is to be remembered that opening the country’s market was one of the important enhanced areas that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) pledged to address when he came into power in 2018. Likewise the government announced that it will soon be opening its doors for major state-owned firms.
