The Prime Minister told local and foreign journalists at a press conference here on Wednesday that the power shortage is not affecting the agriculture sector, which is major part of the country’s economy.

Meles said the power shortage is in fact affecting the service and industry sectors of the economy but it is not affecting the agriculture sector.

As far as current economic indicators are concerned the country’s economic growth has been reduced by more than 1 percent, he said. It was initially estimated that the economy would grow by 11.2 percent. But it is now reduced to 10.1 percent, he said.

Meles said the country will overcome the power shortage problem over the summer [after a month or so], and continue to perform well.

With regard to Somalia, Meles said Ethiopia has no any plan to deploy its troops in Somalia. “We have no plans to do so for a number of reasons,” he said.

He said Ethiopia believes that the situation in Somalia could be stabilized without the deployment of Ethiopian troops.

Through international support to the Transitional Federal Government and its allies in Somalia, Ethiopia believes that the situation would be resolved, he said.

Referring to the other factor for not deploying Ethiopian troops in Somalia, Ethiopia is not yet convinced that the situation would pose clear and present danger to its national security, the premier underlined.

In addition, he said the deployment of Ethiopian troops in Somalia would be unwarranted.

He reiterated that Ethiopia, which is in full support of the Transitional Government in Somalia, now prefers to assist that country by means other than the deployment of Ethiopian troops.

Responding to what would be the motivation of the Eritrean government in terms of its support to jihadists in Mogadishu, Meles said the best answer has to come from the Eritrean government itself. “All we can do is guess,” he said.

He said that the government of Eritrea is helping terrorists to destabilize Ethiopia. “It does not care with on its sleeps so long as it destabilizes Ethiopia,” he said.

The government of Eritrea is also supporting groups that are secessionist in their objective and those who are the exact opposite of that secessionist, He said.

“They are supporting both groups at the same time. The objective is neither the secession nor non-secession, the objective is to make as much chaos in Ethiopia as possible,” he said.

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