Ethiopia misses leather export targets
The Ethiopian Leather Industry Development Institute (LIDI) has announced that the country has earned more than $104.1 million in leather exports, performing 73% lower than its projected target of $180.4 million for the 2010/11 fiscal year.
The exports earnings came from 43 leather and leather products factories which include 22 tanneries, 15 leather footwear firms, and six leather enterprises, which exported their products to Asian, European, American and African countries.
The institution also announced that 22 tanneries had brought in export revenues amounting to $95.3 million where crust and finished leather earned $70.1 million and $24.9 million respectively.
Ethiopia’s leather sector had plans to collect 59.5 million dollars from the leather footwear firms but ended up in collecting only 8.8 million dollars.
Leather footwear firms believe that the reason that the country did not achieve its targeted export revenues is because of a lack of supply, particularly pure leather supply from tanneries. In addition, most of the tanneries only export crusted leather, and are not capable of supplying finished leather.
