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IMF Urges Ethiopia to Slow Nile Dam Project to Protect Economy

Ethiopia should slow the construction of Africa’s largest hydropower plant to avoid the dam and other projects starving the rest of the economy of funds, the International Monetary Fund said.

The government began work on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, situated on the Blue Nile River near the Sudanese border, in April last year. The 80 billion-birr ($4.5 billion) project that will generate 6,000 megawatts, partly for export to the region, is scheduled to be completed in 2018.

“I think there’s a need to rethink some of those projects a little bit to make sure that they don’t absorb all domestic financing just for that project,” IMF country representative Jan Mikkelsen told reporters yesterday. “If you suck in all domestic financing to just a few projects that money will be used for this and not for normal trade and normal business.”

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