ADDIS ABABA, June 5 (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s council of ministers have approved an 18% rise in the budget for the 2021-2022 fiscal year from a year ago to 561.7 billion birr ($13.00 billion), Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Saturday.

The draft budget for the Ethiopian fiscal year of 2014 compares to a total of 476 billion birr that was set aside for spending in the 2020-2021 fiscal year.

The Horn of Africa nation of 110 million people uses a different fiscal calendar than the rest of the world. The 2014 fiscal year corresponds to 2021-2022.

“Due attention is given to enhancing our productive capacity in line with the 10-year perspective plan,” Abiy said in a tweet.

The draft budget now heads to parliament for approval.

Like many other countries in the region, Ethiopia’s economy has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.

In February, the International Monetary Fund projected the country’s economic growth to be 2% in 2020-2021, largely due to the effects of the pandemic, but that it was expected to rebound to 8.7% in 2021-2022 in line with a global recovery.

Last year, Ethiopia had projected an 8.5% economic growth for 2020-2021. ($1 = 43.1944 birr) (Reporting by Dawit Endeshaw; writing by Omar Mohammed; editing by Clelia Oziel)

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