Around two million or more Ethiopians and foreign nationals of Ethiopian origin are believed to be residing in foreign countries. Directly or indirectly, through the remittances which they are sending to their families at home, these large Ethiopian Diaspora communities have so far been playing their part in boosting the nation’s foreign exchange reserves.
Capitalizing on the fast double digit economic growth for over one decade, the Ethiopian government more recently has issued Diaspora engagement policies aiming at encouraging and attracting many more Diaspora in the nation’s various golden investment opportunities.
Above all, the Diaspora engagement policies have been put into place in a bid to bring about everlasting and strong social and economic ties between the Diaspora communities and their homeland in an organized manner more than ever.
Indeed, with ever increasing international money transfer agents in the country, the amount of remittance income has been steadily increasing for obvious reasons lately. Unlike ten year backs or more, there are a huge number of Diaspora investors mostly in the service provision sector.
Also a sizeable number of Diaspora who have in depth knowledge of various field of studies, rich experiences and skills are often seen coming to their homeland and offering training as well as giving lectures to their fellow countrymen and women for free. This good gesture and noble deed of the Diaspora must be appreciated and encouraged as the saying goes give credit where credit is due.
In contrary of the aforementioned worthy acts of the Diaspora, some members of the Diaspora sometimes knowingly or unknowingly have been found operating in counterfeiting businesses and taking advantages of Diaspora tax exemption on certain goods for their own personal gains through immersing themselves in a crime of tax evasion.
Obviously, this malicious nature of fraud will sustain negative impacts on the economy of the country and more worse on those who pay tax candidly as well.
In addition to this, it will definitely open doors for various forms of bureaucratic red tapes so long as the government is forced to take precaution measures to prevent such fraud.
It is true that, on several occasions in the past, the government had allotted plots of land for housing construction for the members of Diaspora. It is an open secret many of them sold the given land automatically without building or having built houses overlooking the laws in this regard.
Thanks to the existing peace and stability in this country, enormous members of Ethiopian Diaspora are showing great interests in investing and living in their homeland than ever before. This great news will get the required momentum and benefit to the nation when the Diaspora engagement policies are used effectively with a view to safeguarding the interests of both the nation and members of the Diaspora.
In several organized meetings for the members of Diaspora here and abroad, they voiced complaints about lack of necessary infrastructure and rampant corruption and so forth.
Nowadays, lack of the necessary infrastructure is being solved once and for all as the nation is aggressively investing in light and heavy electric railways construction. This for sure would interconnect the states of nation as whole and open up vast investment opportunities in the near future.
Moreover, the nation is right now building the biggest hydro-power dam in its history. Hence, the recurrent power outage will certainly be a past history. Apart from the aforesaid mega projects and others, the nation has been putting in place every effort to modernize its financial and communication systems.
As to the fight against corruption, the government has been taking punitive measures against corrupt officials on several occasions. It would continue doing the same in the future in its efforts to ensure good governance.
In sum, it is high time for working towards effective utilization of Diaspora engagement policies in the country.
[www.ethpress.gov.et/herald/]