Comments on: Proposal for Inflation Control: Ethiopian Way

By: Tewodros tesfaye

Tewodros tesfaye — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:36:55 +0000

I am a final year student of economics in jimma university& i found this page when i am searching for information for the final year senior essay under the topic “the impact of monetary policy on inflation in ethiopia”.The increase in inflation is knocking at the door of each and every citizen and affecting the country as a whole. We can no longer afford to ignore it. Hence, all of us must exert concerted efforts to determine its causes and come up with solutions with a view to extricate ourselves from the problem we find ourselves in tha is why i select this topic.

thank you

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:39:02 +0000

thank you

By: Chirotaw

Chirotaw — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:45:18 +0000

Well, the issue of Inflation, especially with regard to fuels is really a burnning and brain storming one which needs intervention of all of us. so, we shan’t give our back to such issues rather we should look for some other alternatives to coop up with this general increase in price level. thannks

By: bini

bini — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:45:43 +0000

I want to start my comment by telling Mr.Belew that viewing every thing towards politics is also one kind of inefficiency, you r wasting ur time and ours. I don’t know the political status of Mr. Addisu but what I can understand is he is telling us the reality which the IMF and World Bank experts couldn’t or don’t want to understand. Even if he has political intention, we can take his advice to control inflation in our country. Sitting there and talking about what TPLF and CUD says couldn’t help our people.
About the analysis, it worth millions of dollars for Ethiopia. I am not an economist, but I can understand what Mr. Addisu said about efficiency as I have experienced in my own business. you can decrease the cost of a product by cutting the waste and if it can work to single business why not for our country. The main thing I want to underline is that it will not be that easy to implement this idea on the nation since we have bad working culture.
Trying to control inflation by monitoring lets many obstructions to happen like corruption, mischief which is the main problem of our nation.
In conclusion I want to thank Mr. Addisu for his good observation on the condition we are. Ethiopia needs such peoples who are concerned and out of the dirty game of politics.

By: Solomon

Solomon — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:58:00 +0000

I am an Economist by training but I am very much impressed with the analysis and solution provided by Addisu. The solutions proposed appears to be based on better understanding of existing technology, our society, our country’s inherent economic difference from the rest of the world. The proposals are simple and do make sense.

To reiterate some of the point, I can now see why Biofuel and control through monitory policy may not work in Ethiopia. IMF and World Bank have solution fit for all which does not take in to consideration some of the points raised by Addisu, such as, the number of people who have access to banking service, percentage of fixed income earners compared to the vast majority of subsistence farmers. Addisu appears to understand the social system better than most IMF and World Bank experts, who are patronising and dogmatic towards the third world. The so called structural adjustment has caused more suffering to the poor in many countries.

Policy makers need to take this kind of free advises seriously. Particularly improving efficiency is very important and the system must protect the public from paying for inefficiency of government institution.

For example Ethiopian Telecommunication is a monopoly and its tariff is not determined by the market force but this year Tele declared close to 1 billion birr profit. Everybody knows, Tele provides service on basis of “take it or leave it” not on bases of customer satisfaction. If people do not like its service they have no where to go. So the government must demand cost down based on productivity improvement.

By: AB

AB — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 07:56:25 +0000

What I hear from government authorities or other people regarding the high inflation in Ethiopia is dubious. This article has tried to thoroughly analyse the Why, What and How and given recommendation which I think is very helpful in alleviating the inflation crisis in the long term.

By: Gashe

Gashe — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 23:07:36 +0000

It is a very good analysis. It is not unusual to find organisations where a simple task that can be done by one person is performed by many individuals. A clerk for instance writes a letter for a certain customer and send it his superior, the clerk’s immediate boss puts initial and send it a manager to get it signed. Again that manager might send it to another office to get it rubber-stamped. In this instance 4 persons are involved to process a single letter which could have been carried out by a single person. Another thing that should be mentioned in connection with this scenario is the time it takes to process the task. There are times when at least one of the employees is not in the mood to work or absent from work, which results to delays in accomplishing the job.

Of course, what can also be observed from the above scenario is that supervisors or managers heavily involve themselves in routine tasks instead of limiting themselves to oversee how things are going and playing coordination role between various departments, etc.

Overall Addisu’s analysis is very important and factual that clearly describes the reality in many of government organisation in Ethiopia. I hope those specialists in systems or workflow design will contribute to the discussion.

By: Belew

Belew — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:24:54 +0000

Please do spare us from TPLF propaganda. No Propaganda can change the reality.