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The Amhara National Region Rehabilitation
Development Organisation, known in Amharic as
Endeavour, plans to soon build a cotton
thresher with a project cost of 52 million Br.
The organisation is currently reviewing differently
technologies before procuring the machinery for the
threshing factory, which will separate the cotton
from the rest of the plant, sources disclosed.
The factory will be equipped with machineries that
have the capacity to thresh 200,000qts of cotton per
annum. Kobo, in Amhara region, is going to be home
for the new cotton factory. The organisation is
preparing to enter into cotton farm development
through its subsidiary, Zeleke Mechanisation,
sources revealed.
Endeavour, however, must first conduct a feasibility
study before carrying out its plans to develop
300hct of land for the project. Endeavour must also
find funding, and is planning to submit its proposal
to banks next week, the sources said.
“Endeavour does not get directly involved in farming
cotton, but it trains farmers and purchases their
product,” Wondossen Kebede, its managing director,
told Fortune. “Our aim is to process and add
value to farmers’ produces, and supply it to textile
factories.”
The push in cotton cultivation is intended to
support a leap in textile production. The country
has earned about 12.6 million dollars last year from
export market of textile.
The government, however, has already forecasted that
during the current fiscal year, the country will
earn 166.7 million dollars from exports in the
sector. The government envisions that textile will
generate 500 million dollars in the next three
years, though the forecast may be jeopardised by a
shortage of cotton supply, a market expert told
Fortune. The shortage is driving up cotton
prices. The current market price of cotton has risen
to 11 Br per kg this year, up from seven Birr per kg
last year.
Hoping to avert the cotton shortage, the government
is preparing 15,000hct of land for the development
of cotton farms in various regions. The Ministry of
Trade and Industry (MoTI) has requested that the
Privatisation and Public Enterprises Supervision
Agency (PPESA), which manages government-owned
property, prepare land under its supervision for the
production of cotton.
PPESA has in turn ordered Abobo Agricultural
Development Enterprises of Gambella and the Semein
Omo Agricultural Development of Southern Nations and
Nationalities Peoples Regional State (SNNPR) to
develop 7,000hct and 2,500hct of land, respectively,
for cotton cultivation. Similarly, Gibe Agricultural
Development was instructed by PPESA to cultivate
600hct of land for cotton farms, and the Upper Awash
Agro-Industry was told to develop 1,100hct of land
for the same purpose.
The organisation expects that its main
market outlets will be textile factories in the
Amhara region like Bahir Dar Texitiles and Kombolcha
Texitiles factories.
According to the Plan for Accelerated and Sustained
Development to End Poverty (PASDED), Ethiopia needs
a total of 1.6 billion dollars of investments over
the next three years in this particular sector of
the economy to reach its export goals.
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