Non-Liberalization of Investment in Financial Services in Ethiopia and Its Challenges/Implications on the Country‟s WTO Accession: Analytical and Comparative Analysis

Abstract

Ethiopia has applied to join WTO a little less than two decades ago and the accession process is still going on, which requires her to undergo considerable changes be it legal or economic so that the market liberalization would be materialized. However, instead of showing a progress towards financial liberalization thereby conveying a message to the concerned that she is serious about the accession, the country has uncharacteristically closed the room for financial liberalization in her newly enacted legislations. In this research the impacts of the newly enacted investment law and regulation on the accession process of Ethiopia to world trade organization and trade negotiation with WTO member states will be assessed in line with the lately acceded countries sharing relatively similar economic status with Ethiopia. The research methodology employed herein is through the reference of relevant materials such as books, laws, articles, websites and journals as primary sources and critically analysing Ethiopian investment laws by comparing the practices of certain least developed countries that have acceded to WTO lately as secondary sources. The reforms Ethiopia needs to undergo in the financial laws and policies to finalize the accession process to WTO and the mechanisms of curbing the potential challenges of such reforms by raising some compelling alternative solutions will also be dealt with in this research. By doing so, the research tries to awaken the stakeholders and shows them what they need to do in terms of amending the relevant laws and policies to progressively liberalize the financial sectors to accelerate Ethiopia’s accession to WTO.