4.1 Urban Economy and Role of the Town

Jinka town is administration, trade and tourism center. Jinka has a two popular market days meeting on Tuesday and Saturday where the surrounding farmers supply their agricultural out puts, cultural gifts and the like. The town has one Motel, one Lodge,  four hotels,  six pensions, 16 bars, 26 restaurants, four pastries, 15 breakfast, 23 grain stores, 30 textile, 13 bakeries, 14 home and office furniture shops, 22 boutiques and three fruit and vegetables. In Jinka town, there is Commercial Bank of Ethiopia and Omo Micro financial institutions giving services in the town. There are no any other financial institutions and insurances in the town except those mentioned above. The average annual revenue of the municipality within the 2007/08-2010/2011 period was 2, 527, 500.00 Birr as per the information obtained from the city administration.

In Jinka town there is no industrial zone facilitated with different infrastructures and there are no factories established in the town. However; there are Some Small Scale industries that include 14 grinding mills, 12 metal and wood works and six Hollow Concrete Blocks production enterprises in the town. In terms of Micro and Small Enterprises, there are MSE organized in different sectors. 4 MSEs in trade and businesses, 6 enterprises in urban agriculture, 2 enterprises in textile and related activities and 2 enterprises are organized in service provisions. These enterprises have created job opportunities for 2144 people. There is cluster with 8 blocks built for MSEs. 

In the town there are 24 trade and 15 hotels and tourism investment projects with a capital of 11,379,000 birr that are already functional. There are also investment projects with the capital of 5million birr and they are under construction. Similarly; there are investment projects with a capital of 12.5 million birr which do not start any activities and in general the investment projects of the town amounts to 16.4 million birr as per the information from the zonal investment office. The town being the center of tourist destination, it should increase its service provision capacity.

Jinka has urban-rural economic linkages with the surrounding areas. The town gets grain products such as teff, maize, wheat, barley, fruit and vegetable and the like, livestock supply, natural resources and extra labor from surrounding areas, agricultural inputs, manufacturing and commercial products from Addis Ababa while the town distributes these products and services to the surrounding rural areas.