Moha Soft Drinks, Pepsi’s bottler in Ethiopia, could be closing its operations amid a crippling foreign currency crisis, reports say.
If the company goes ahead and shutters its eight factories across the country, the jobs of thousands of its employees could be in jeopardy.
According to local media reports, the company, which is part of MIDROC Investment group, a conglomerate founded by the country’s richest person, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi, has been struggling to import ingredients like syrup as well as machinery equipment due to a lack of foreign currency availability. These developments, reports say, have prompted a pause in production and potential plans to close operations.
Unless the company sees a sustainable solution, the number of people out of work could be as high as 8000.
Moha additionally bottles other PepsiCo products like 7UP.
In the past few years, Ethiopia has faced a shortage of foreign currency reserves as it struggles to attract foreign investment amid a devastating war and protracted conflicts. The UN estimated the country of more than a 100 million people had around $0.8 billion in foreign currency reserves by May this year which could only cover three weeks of imports.
Earlier this month, Ethio Lease, country’s only foreign financier announced its was closing its offices and had begun “a process of voluntary liquidation” after a new regulatory framework forced it to dominate all fixed payments for lease agreements in the local currency, birr.
