While on the face of it , manufactured exports appear to have registered impressive growth in the past few years, a closer look at the structure of exports reveals that leather and leather products, food and textiles in that order constituted the bulk of industrial exports.
Manufactured exports are thus limited to agricultural based products.
Export earnings generated by the sector have been able to meet only about half the sector's foreign exchange requirements. Ethiopia has an abundant supply of unskilled and semi-skilled labour. However, there exist acute shortages of executive personnel such as managers, trained production supervisors, various disciplines in engineering, etc. Consequently the share of domestic intermediate inputs going to other sectors of the economy has been much less and could only be met from imports. Therefore, the manufacturing sector has failed to raise the technical capacity of the agriculture sector by supplying it with improved implements and other inputs.