Quoting the January 2011 forecast of the Economist Intelligence Unit, the magazine reported that Ethiopia’s economy,Africa’s fifth-largest economy in 2010, is projected to grow by 9 percent in 2011.

By the estimate of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ethiopia will be the world’s third fastest-growing economy for 2011-2015, lagging behind only China and India.

While the IMF predicts the Ethiopian economy to grow by 8.1 percent each year over the next five years, the government forecasts a higher growth rate.

“The economy is projected to grow by 11 percent this budget year,” said Prime Minister Meles Zenaw while presenting his government’s eight months performance to members of parliament.

The IMF predicts that exports of goods will grow from 1.4 billion dollars in 2008/09 to 2.3 billion dollars in 2010/11 and 4.4 billion dollars in 2014/15. Imports of goods will grow from 7.7 billion dollars to 13.8 billion dollars over the same period.

In his last MP address, Prime Minister Meles has revealed that the export sector has shown a staggering 48 percent growth over the past eight months.

Zemedeneh Negatu, managing partner of Ernst & Young Ethiopia, predicts that Ethiopia’s economy to reach 472 billion in 15 years on the basis of GDP at purchasing power parity exchange rates. He says by 2023 it will be sub-SaharanAfrica’s third-largest economy, with per capita GDP of over $4,000.

The magazine reported that the service sector including real estate, hotels, transportation, communication, banking, health and education, recently overtook agriculture as the main contributor at 45% of GDP and are forecast to become even more dominant. In the six months to January 2011, gold passed oil seeds as the second-biggest contributor to exports, providing more than 179 million dollars of the total 1.1 billion dollars exported, it stated.