Ethiopia paving ground for SDGs – Premier

Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn on Friday said Ethiopia is undertaking important tasks to level the ground for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).The Premier was speaking at the High-Level Thematic Debate on Achieving the SDGs opened Thursday at the UN headquarters in New York, as world leaders are also gathering to sign the Paris climate accord.

Consultations were conducted in different parts of the country by sector institutions both at the federal and regional levels to have a common understanding on the SDGs, he said.

Various workshops and trainings were organized at the federal level by the government in collaboration with the United Nations to create awareness and understanding among different actors and stakeholders and their role in implementing, monitoring and evaluating the SDGs, he added.

Similarly, a Policy Matrix constituting sets of indicators has been developed to track the implementation of the SDGs, he said.

Furthermore, steps are now underway to review the SDGs indicators and identify those which are easy to monitor within the framework of our national realities, capacities and policy priorities.

The Ethiopian Premier also highlighted the challenges ahead in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

“As we embark on the implementation of the SDGs, we need to be mindful of the enormous and multiple challenges, which could impede our efforts,� he said.

According to the Premier, peace and security challenges, global economic slowdown as well as climate change and other natural calamities will have their own impacts on the implementation of the SDGs.

“Taking all these into account, we in Ethiopia have charted our development course making sure that the SDGs are mainstreamed in our second-five year growth and transformation plan,� he told participants.

“With a vision of becoming a middle-income country by 2025, we have embarked on this second phase of our economic plan after having completed GTP I with a great deal of success,� he said.

PM Hailemariam also pointed out the challenges that Ethiopia will face while implementing its national plan.

“There is no doubt we have enormous challenges ahead of us, largely related to the difficulty of financing our development plans. That is why the commitments made in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the various planned actions contained therein are so critical, as I have no doubt they also are to all those that are in the situation we are in,� he said.