Ethiopia Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB), May 2025

Background/ Rationale

Why develop a Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB) at national level? What problem needed to be solved?

• There are a total of 12 regional states and two self-governing cities in Ethiopia; in seven (7) of them there are operational sub-national CWG (in Afar, Amhara, Benishangul Gumuz, Oromia, Somali, Southern, Tigray. However, only Somali and Tigray regions had the capacity to develop their own MEBs, in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
• This meant that the rest of the regional CWGs may not have the resources and capacity to develop a data-based MEB through which they can calculate their regional multipurpose cash (MPC) transfer values (TVs).
• This lack of a standardized, more robust approach to MPC TV calculations led to calls for the ECWG to initiate the development of a MEB at national level last year.