This archive report was first published on 17 May 2020.
As of May 14, Ethiopia had registered 263 Covid-19 cases, 108 recoveries, and five deaths, with the country's population of 110 million bearing the brunt of the pandemic.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has made a public appeal for debt relief, citing the need to redirect resources to save lives and livelihoods. In an opinion piece published in the New York Times last month, he posed the question: 'Do we continue to pay toward debt or redirect resources to save lives and livelihoods?'
According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the economic growth in Africa as a whole and Eastern Africa in particular will be negatively impacted by the pandemic.
Experts have identified several structural vulnerabilities in the Ethiopian economy, including its agricultural mainstay, low productivity, high unemployment, static export, high trade deficit, high current account deficit, and high inflation.
Getachew Teklemariam, an economic analyst in Addis Ababa, believes that the pandemic is adding to the country's existing economic challenges. 'This pandemic is adding more burden on an economy already pressured with multiple challenges. In comparison, the service sector will be affected hugely,' he told The EastAfrican.
Getachew also notes that the agriculture sector will be relatively insulated from the pandemic, as it is primarily subsistence-based and operated on small family farms.
However, he argues that the country's economic reforms made before the outbreak need to be revised to reduce the economic implications of the pandemic.
The Ethiopian Economic Association has projected that the country's GDP will drop by 10 per cent if the pandemic persists for at least six months.
As a response, experts from the association are calling for commercial banks to reschedule loan repayments and write off interest payments for severely affected sectors until the shock is abated.
