In May 2019 New Business Ethiopia reported that Tigray’s regional revenue authority had collected about 3.7 billion birr, roughly $130 million, during the first nine months of the Ethiopian fiscal year that began on 8 July 2018.
Director Asefu Lilay said the haul came from more than 180,000 taxpayers, rose about 6 percent from the same period a year earlier, and reached about 74 percent of the period target. About 11,180 of those taxpayers were in the VAT category, and the full-year target was listed as about 4.9 billion birr.
Regional tax figures are dry on the surface, but they still matter as a dated checkpoint for how northern Ethiopia’s public finances looked before later war destroyed so much of that revenue base.
As regional finance archive, the report is a baseline for researchers who want numbers rather than slogans about Tigray’s economy in the late reform years.
Sources: New Business Ethiopia