A Paris based company known for credit card, lottery and high security printing, Francois-Charles Oberthur Fiduciarie (FCOF), has been hired to print Ethiopia’s bank notes, worth millions of dollars. It is, nonetheless, a company whose reputation has been heavily bruised from a corruption scandal still fresh in Kenya.

The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has established a federal level board to handle and pass decisions on collective employee and employer disputes.

Proclamation 466/2005, passed to improve the working relations between employers and employees, gives the Ministry autonomy to establish a board in the capital that functions at a federal level.

Tikur Abay Shoe S.C. has finally received two interested bidders at an auction sale organised by the Privatisation and Public Supervisory Agency (PPESA) after repeated attempts to sell the factory over the last six years had failed.

PPESA sources told Fortune that when the board of the Agency meets next week for their regular session, the issue of privatising Tikur Abay will finally be settled.

The project to supply electric power to Djibouti, which was begun by the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo), has reached the financial stage of the consultancy tender with four companies in line.

Of the seven companies that made it to the technical evaluation, EEPCo has chosen the Canadian RFW, which is working jointly with the British PB, and the German FICHTNER, which is working with the Finnish HIFB to advance to the financial stage of the consultancy tender.

The Addis Abeba Investment Authority is preparing to take over 62ht in Akaki-Kaliti to expand the industrial zone.

The handover, which is expected to take place between the Authority and the Akaki-Kaliti District within the next two weeks, is awaiting the completion of basic infrastructural work on the plot. Once the Authority has received the land, it will be assigned to investors involved in the garment, leather, food, drinks, plastic, leather, metal, and paper sectors.

Three months after CUD members of parliament(MPs) established a caucus and elected their party whips, the question of their legality has raised controversy in the whips’ most recent meeting.
 

The meeting was called by Shiferaw Jarso, government chief whip, at the close of the first regular session of Parliament on Tuesday, March 14, 2006, that occurred after a month’s recess. The whips met on the next day for two and half hours in a meeting hall at Parliament. The agenda of the meeting was not explained or given to participants in advance.

The Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) floated a negotiation sale invitation on Monday, March 13, 2006, for the luxurious Bahir Dar Resort Hotel, following the cancellation of offers it had received for the property during its tender two weeks ago.

The construction of Bahir Dar Resort Hotel, owned by the late Mekonen Gebeyehu and Ehitfanta Dnekew, was started in 1996 on the shores of Lake Tana in Kebele 03 of Bahir Dar, 563Km north of Addis Abeba. The hotel stands on 13,836sqm and has 144 rooms. After 90pc of the building had been completed, construction was interrupted in 2001 for 18 months due to the lack of financing.

The underground water project started by the Tigray Water Resources Bureau and intended to supply Mekelle, has faced major setbacks, which are causing severe problems for the town’s water supply.

The Bureau began the project in 2000 in an area known as Aynalem, five kilometres away from the town. Of the 11 wells that were dug, five did not yield any results while the remaining six are supplying less than what was anticipated.

The National Mining Corporation Plc (NMiC), a member of MIDROC Ethiopia Group, is to begin direct export of marble products to China, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

NMiC, formerly known as Ethio-Libya Mining Corporation, owned by Sheik Mohammed Al Almoudi and his brother Sheik Hassan Hussein, was established in March 1993 after the owners bought the state owned Corporation for 27 million Br. It was later transformed into a private limited company in 1996 and now has a paid up capital of 103 million Br.

A sun-dried coffee competition organized and sponsored by the Japanese Unicafe Inc, one of the biggest coffee roasting companies in Japan, was concluded on March 14, 2006 with awards of 4,000 and 2,000 dollars to the first and second place unions.

The final round of the third annual competition was held between five district coffee farmers under two Coffee Farmers Cooperative Unions. Seven district coffee farmers organized under the Oromia and Sidama Coffee Farmers Cooperative Unions participated in the competition. Two were from Oromia while the rest were from Sidama. The finalists were from Oromia and the remaining from Sidama, while the winners from Dara and Dale Districts, were from Sidama.

The African Governance Report (AGR) 2005, undertaken by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) presented on March 9, 2006, in Addis Abeba, identified Ethiopia as having a one party system.

The report evaluated 27 African Countries and is the outcome of five years of information collection, but did not include data related to the elections in Ethiopia last year.

The Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) has decided to begin a credit system for the instalation of 80,000 landlines as of March 10, 2006, which will allow customers to pay for their new landlines within a 12-month period.

The Corporation has also decided to refund service costs to 586 of its pre-paid mobile customers. The customers were charged unduly for calls during the national telephone number change that took place in September.

When you land at Addis Abeba Airport, you immediately confront the curious life of African economies.It is new, beautiful, and has the look and feel of a world-class airport. However a week ago, the elevator that takes you to the arrival lounge was not working. The striking thing, though, was that it did not have the large number of passengers passing through it that most world-class airports do. It is all dressed up, but with nowhere to go.

Yet, the ambitious message it sent out was still refreshing. Not too many African countries can today think of building a new airport, so Addis’ new arrival seemed to say “it is possible”. This sense of possibilities bubbling beneath the surface is what one gets travelling around Addis.

Mercato is popularly known as the largest open market in Africa, if not the world. I am not sure if this is a compliment or flattery, but I dare say that many dwellers in Addis Abeba, including City Hall officials, do know every nook and cranny in Mercato.

As a person born and bred in Addis and well over 50, I should have known better about the foul smelling Dorro Terra long before I did. My knowledge shot up last week. With unconfirmed reports about bird flu in the country at the back of my mind, and the gossip that the price of chickens and eggs have plummeted as a consequence, I paid a visit to Mercato to find out more about the poultry market.

Very few people surprise me. As a matter of fact, very few things surprise me. Now that I find myself in a situation where I get the opportunity to learn a lot more about my surroundings and the type of issues that are pertinent to everyday life, even fewer things surprise me. 

When you hear one screw -up after another being chalked up day after day, nothing really catches you off guard. I like to think that I have people and situations figured out about 90 seconds after I have encountered them. The rest is just detail. The more you get to know the details, the less amusing situations turn out to be. It is sad, really.
 

Employment Generating Safety Nets