Government Targets 10.1pc Growth and Single-Digit Inflation

Opening the new parliament, President Taye Atske Selassie set a 10.1 percent growth target and promised to push inflation into single digits. He also reported record exports of 11.2 billion dollars and FDI of 4.5 billion.

Ethiopia is targeting 10.1 percent economic growth in the current fiscal year and intends to push inflation into single digits, President Taye Atske Selassie told a joint session of the House of Peoples' Representatives and the House of Federation on Tuesday.

The address opened the first year of parliament's seventh term, a day after lawmakers returned Abiy Ahmed to the premiership.

The numbers he put on the record

11.2 billion dollars in export earnings in the latest fiscal year, which the president called a record
4.5 billion dollars in foreign direct investment inflows, up on the previous year
1.3 billion quintals of annual crop production in 2025/26, against 335 million quintals in 2011 — close to a fourfold increase over the period

Export earnings and FDI are the two lines that determine whether the reform programme can be financed without new borrowing, and both moved the right way.

Sea access stays on the list

The president also said Ethiopia will intensify its push for reliable access to the sea, and that it will pursue the objective through peaceful means, dialogue, and arrangements built on mutual benefit. That formulation — give and take, peacefully — is the one the government has settled on, and it was repeated from the podium rather than left to a spokesperson.

He framed the year's domestic priorities as a shift from scope to quality: in education, in health, and in social protection, with industry and agriculture as the engines.

Open

The president gave a growth target but no fiscal arithmetic to support it, and no inflation path or timetable for reaching single digits. The crop-production baseline is given as 2011 without the calendar being specified, which makes the comparison hard to read. And while 10.1 percent is the target, the government has not published the current-year estimate it is measuring against.

Sources: Birr Metrics, 6 October 2026, Birr Metrics, 6 October 2026, Birr Metrics, 6 October 2026, Birr Metrics, 6 October 2026, Fana Television, 6 October 2026