Ethiopia Competitiveness and Job Creation Project

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The development objective of the Competitiveness and Job Creation Project for Ethiopia is to contribute to job creation by attracting investments and improving competitiveness of enterprises in the targeted industrial zones (IZ) and their linked domestic enterprises. The project comprises of four components. The first component, institutional and regulatory framework and capacity building objective is to strengthen the legal and regulatory framework to underpin an effective industrial zones program, through the provision of consulting services and goods. This component focuses on the development of a sound legal framework with clear rules of the game and the institutional capacity to catalyze private sector investment in the IZs. The sub-component include: (i) preparation of high quality promotional materials to set out the investment process, the comparative advantages of investing in Ethiopia, and in the IZs in particular; (ii) development of a website as a tool in marketing and lead generation efforts; (iii) organization of a few international investor events targeting identified industries, sectors, and companies; and (iv) a customer relations management system whose objectives will include due diligence on incoming investors. The second component, support for industrial infrastructure objective is to support the development of physical on-site and off-site infrastructure through the provision of consulting services, goods, and works. The third component, enhancing IZ linkages to the local economy aims to support business linkages between domestic enterprises in producing and processing (upstream) activities, and marketing (downstream) activities in the industrial zones (IZs). It has following two sub-components: (i) skills development center; and (ii) business-to-business linkage fund. The fourth component, project management and monitoring and evaluation will strengthen the capacity of the project implementation unit (PIU) for expediting implementation, management, monitoring and evaluation through the provision of equipment, technical assistance, and operating support.