Ethiopia said Saturday it had obtained international loan and aid amounting to 215 million U. S. dollars in the first half of the current budget year between July 2005 to June 2006.

Most of the assistance would be used for construction of roads, agricultural and food safety, education, health, capacity building as well as hydroelectric power generation projects, said Getachew Admasu, head of public relations with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.

He told journalists that 177 million dollars were obtained from multilateral institutions, while the remaining 38 million dollars were secured from donor nations, including Britain, Canada, China, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States.

Getachew said that the Group of Eight industrialized countries have reached agreement on ways of effecting debt cancellation on the basis of the Multilateral Debt Cancellation Initiative.

He said Ethiopia is one of the countries that have qualified for benefiting from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative, and recalled that the International Monetary Fund has fully canceled Ethiopia's 161 million dollar debt.

Getachew also said the World Bank's International Development Association and the African Development Fund are expected to write off Ethiopia's 408 million dollar debt.

Ethiopia is one of the world's poorest countries and its development efforts have to rely on massive foreign aid.

Source: Xinhua