Ethiopia loses 25 billion dollars in capital flight

Ethiopia loses 25 billion dollars in capital flight

oct. 30 (ESAT News)–A new research conducted by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has indicated that the amount of Ethiopia’s illicit capital flight in the last four decades amounted to nearly 25 billion USD.
The research, which covers the period between 1970 and 2010, shows that 33 Sub-Saharan African countries including Ethiopia have lost over 810 billion USD that exceeds the amount they received in official development aid from donors. In the same period, the amount lost in illicit capital flight also dwarfed the region’s inflow of foreign direct investment, which amounted only to 305 billion USD.
The researchers underlined that there is an urgent need to stem illicit capital flight and make concerted efforts to repatriate of stolen assets “as a part of the broader goals of scaling up development financing, combating corruption, and improving transparency in the global financial system.”
The report, Capital Flight from Sub-Saharan African Countries: Updated Estimates, 1970 – 2010, was conducted by economists at the Political Economy Research Institute, which is based at University of Massachusetts.
Oil exporter Nigeria tops the list with 311.4 billion wasted in capital flight. Among the non-oil export countries, Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with huge amount of capital flight leaving the country unaccounted for.

A separate report released last year by the International Financial Integrity has put the amount of illicit capital outflow to well over 11 billion in the last decade