Selected Speeches Of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I

COMMUNICATIONS

... We know that the zeal and vigour with which all Our people labour to preserve their lives and increase their standard of living can bear fruit only when adequate communications facilities are afforded them, and We have accordingly given special priority to this subject. A nation cannot prosper unless it has overcome the problems of communications. Without communications, agriculture cannot develop, nor can commerce or industry thrive. It is communications that relates and binds people together by ties of friendship.

Since it is the improvement in communications that has led to the development year by year of Our coffee trade and other exports, We have obtained a long term loan of Eth. Dollars 37,500,000 from the International Bank for Development and Reconstruction, and have arranged for a further extensive highway construction programme.

The development of aviation being of equal significance in the growth of Our country's economy, We have obtained a loan of Eth. Dollars 60,000,000 and plans are under way for the purchase of modern aircraft and the construction of additional airfields.

Realizing that the lack of dock facilities for large vessels at Assab has decreased the usefulness of this port, which could increase substantially Our Government's revenues, We have arranged for a contract to be signed with a Yugoslav firm for the construction of docking facilities at a cost of Eth. Dollars 26,000,000 which will enable large ships to touch at this port. The terms of this contract are extremely favourable to Ethiopia and could not have been obtained elsewhere. Out of the Ethiopian Dollars 26,000,000 required for the development of the port, the Company itself has agreed to advance half this amount to the Imperial Ethiopian Government at a 3 percent interest rate, the loan to be repaid in fourteen annual instalments, a clear proof of the spirit of a friendly nation....

November 2, 1960.

Electronic edition created and published online by members of the
Emperor Haile Sellassie First Theocracy Reign
Order of the Nyahbinghi

July 19, 2017