(Sep 29, 2011, Bloomberg)--Ethiopia plans to offer more bonds to finance Africa’s biggest power plant after selling 7 billion birr ($408 million) of debt domestically over the past six months, Communications Minister Bereket Simon said.
The sale will contribute to the 80 billion birr needed to finish the 5,250-megawatt Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River, Bereket said in an interview on Sept. 27. The country isn’t raising funds from foreigners in a bid to demonstrate its economic resurgence, he said.
Ethiopia, source of the main tributary of the Nile River, started building the hydropower plant in April as it seeks to become a regional electricity exporter amid shortages in countries including Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. The Horn of Africa nation, which relies on commodities such as coffee for most of its foreign currency, is also diversifying an economy that the African Development Bank says may double in size by 2020.
“Building a dam on the Nile has been the dream of every Ethiopian,” said Bereket, who heads a so-called public mobilization council to raise funds for the project. “For millennia, we have been looking at the Nile as if it has been a curse that took our fertile soil and benefited others while Ethiopia was impoverished.”
Egypt depends on the flow of the Nile for all of its water and historically opposed infrastructure projects by upstream nations during former President Hosni Mubarak’s rule, according to Ethiopia’s government. Since Mubarak was deposed in February, Egyptian and Ethiopian officials have met twice and relations are improving, Bereket said, without elaborating.
The hydropower plant is scheduled to be completed by mid- 2017. The project involves building a dam wall 145 meters (476 feet) high and 1.8 kilometers long, before flooding 1,680 square kilometers (649 square miles), an area more than twice the size of Singapore, of mostly uninhabited forest on the Blue Nile in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region.
The government’s plan to borrow 398.4 billion birr by mid- 2015 to invest in industry and infrastructure may lead to the economy over-heating and debt problems, the World Bank said in June. Annual inflation in Ethiopia was 40.6 percent in August, partly because the central bank boosted money supply. FULL ARTICLE AT Bloomberg »
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Ethiopia to launch wind farm amid mega hydro power plan
Ethiopia announced large hydroelectric project on the Nile
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The sale will contribute to the 80 billion birr needed to finish the 5,250-megawatt Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River, Bereket said in an interview on Sept. 27. The country isn’t raising funds from foreigners in a bid to demonstrate its economic resurgence, he said.
Ethiopia, source of the main tributary of the Nile River, started building the hydropower plant in April as it seeks to become a regional electricity exporter amid shortages in countries including Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. The Horn of Africa nation, which relies on commodities such as coffee for most of its foreign currency, is also diversifying an economy that the African Development Bank says may double in size by 2020.
“Building a dam on the Nile has been the dream of every Ethiopian,” said Bereket, who heads a so-called public mobilization council to raise funds for the project. “For millennia, we have been looking at the Nile as if it has been a curse that took our fertile soil and benefited others while Ethiopia was impoverished.”
Egypt depends on the flow of the Nile for all of its water and historically opposed infrastructure projects by upstream nations during former President Hosni Mubarak’s rule, according to Ethiopia’s government. Since Mubarak was deposed in February, Egyptian and Ethiopian officials have met twice and relations are improving, Bereket said, without elaborating.
The hydropower plant is scheduled to be completed by mid- 2017. The project involves building a dam wall 145 meters (476 feet) high and 1.8 kilometers long, before flooding 1,680 square kilometers (649 square miles), an area more than twice the size of Singapore, of mostly uninhabited forest on the Blue Nile in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region.
The government’s plan to borrow 398.4 billion birr by mid- 2015 to invest in industry and infrastructure may lead to the economy over-heating and debt problems, the World Bank said in June. Annual inflation in Ethiopia was 40.6 percent in August, partly because the central bank boosted money supply. FULL ARTICLE AT Bloomberg »
Related topics:
Ethiopia plans to build more Nile dams
Forex Bonds Floated for Diaspora
African Hydropower: Damming At What Cost?
Ethiopia to launch wind farm amid mega hydro power plan
Ethiopia announced large hydroelectric project on the Nile
MPs vow to block Ethiopian power plant
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