The repeated attempts to get an audience with senior level
officials including Prime Minister Meles Zenawi by the Donors
Assistance Group (DAG) has finally reached fruition after five
letters were sent to Neway Gebreab, chief economic advisor to
the Prime Minster and Sufian Ahmed, minister of Finance and
Economic Development. Members of the group will now have the
opportunity to speak to officials in government on issues of
democratic governance.
Meles
to Meet Donor’s Rep.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi will be meeting
representatives of donor countries dubbed as
Developments Assistance Group (DAG) on Monday
morning, May 8, 2006. Invited by the government,
this will be the first meeting since early 2005 for
the DAG members to face the Prime Minister with the
intention to talk about issues of democratic
governance.
Neway Gebreab, chief economic advisor to the Prime
Minister with a ministerial portfolio and chair of
the government’s governance committee, sent a letter
to Ambassador Timothy Clarke of the European
Commission (EC) initiating the meeting. For the
donors, it took five official letters written since
November 2005 to Neway and Sufian Ahmed, minister of
Finance and Economic Development (MoFED), to get an
audience with senior officials of the government,
including the Prime Minister.
Diplomats take this opportunity as a beginning of
continues dialogue, which has been in absence since
the political violence following the May 2005
national elections. Their relationship with the
government has been .......
At 60,
Ethiopian Inaugurates Cargo Terminal and Maintenance Hanger
After five months of delays, the 240 million Br cargo
terminal at the Bole International Airport was inaugurated by Prime
Minister Meles Zenawi on Friday, May 5, 2006.
With the anticipation of the growth in the export of
perishables such as flowers, fruits, vegetables, and meat to the
international market, the government project to construct an
expanded cargo terminal began almost three years ago.
Gov’t Nominates Ex-Derg Official
to Head Caretaker Admin
Berhanu Deressa,
a former official in the Derg regime, is being recruited as the head
of Addis Abeba's new Caretaker Administration.
Prime Minister
Meles Zenawi announced in a report that he gave to parliament last
month that the government would give way to a caretaker
administration that would govern the city for a year before holding
second elections if the elected council members did not take over
the city council in the three week period that was given to them
during the same speech.
The famed state
owned mineral water producer, Ambo Mineral Water Factory (AMWF), has
extended the time limit to submit expressions of interest in its
search for an international company to enter into a joint venture to
conduct a 150 million Br expansion project.
The project
would increase the capacity of the factory by three fold from its
current one.
The expansion is expected to commence in 2006 - 2007; the factory
put out an international call to tender at the beginning of March
2006 the original closing date was set for May 2, 2006
Although the Ethiopian government and Ethiopian Petroleum Enterprise
(EPE), the importing body for all the fuel consumption in the
country, has been stating that there is no fuel shortage to speak
of, oil companies that sent transport vehicles to ship Jet
A1/Kerosene inland have been receiving the fuel in rations at the
Port of Djibouti.
Mugher
Evaluates Two Co to Procure Slip Ring Motor Tender
Mugher Cement
Enterprise has qualified two of the four companies that participated
in a tender to procure a 1.6 million Br slip-ring motor for a cement
milling machine that it opened two weeks ago.
Mugher, the
largest of the three state owned cement producers in the country, is
located 155Km west of Addis Abeba where it has two processing
plants. One of the plants has had its Klinker Mill motor go out of
service. In order to replace the parts that the machine needs, the
Enterprise floated a tender at the beginning of March 2006.
Mugher Cement
Enterprise, the largest cement producer in the country, has awarded
the third phase of its expansion project, expected to cost close to
1.5 billion Br, to the Chinese company Sinoma International.
Youngest Oil Company
Registers 349,000 Br Four Month Gross Profits
Yetebaberut
Beharawi Petroleum (YBP), owned solely by Ethiopian shareholders,
registered a 349,000 Br gross profit.
The
distribution of fuel on the local market for over 50 years was
dominated by four multinational companies: Shell, Mobil, TOTAL and
Agip. The latter sold its properties and businesses to Shell
Ethiopia and left the country in 2003. The remaining three had
controlled the market until the Council of Ministers passed a
decision on October 31, 2003, to end the control of the
international oil firms and allow other investors to engage in the
business.
The management
of the Authority, along with the employees union, presented a
request to the Administration asking that it be administered by the
proclamation and be able to handle employee issues autonomously. The
City Administration had been handling all the workers issues of the
Authority up to that point. The union, which was denied recognition
after 2003, was working to transfer the Authority following the
employer and employee proclamation’s regulations.
Addis Looks to South Africa as Model for City Plan
The Federal
Planning Institute has set its sights on a new, South African
developed, Integrated Development Plan (IDP) for Addis Abeba.
Experts in the
sector are adamantly opposed to the new plan claiming that the
current structural strategic approach that is being implemented is
more than sufficient.
The Ethiopian
Civil Service College (ECSC) is going to return a training centre at
the Kotebe area to its former owner, the Ethiopian Electric Power
Corporation (EEPCo), after having used it for 11 years.
EEPCo has had
its old facility returned to it after deciding to reopen a training
college for graduate studies.
Parliamentary Debate on Five-
Year Draft Plan Continues
This is the
first of the plans that was presented for public debate, the first
two having been passed by the Council of Ministers without being
brought before the House of People’s Representatives.
Abdul Mohamoud Calls on Ethiopian to Emphasize African Roots
Abdul Mohamoud,
executive director of the InterAfrica Group, an NGO better known for
organizing political debates among parties during elections, has
called on managers and board members of Ethiopian Airlines to
strongly emphasis the airlines’ African roots and honour the
continent’s heroes, including the legendry Abebe Bikila.
Recently, a
group of senior Ministers including Girma Biru, minister of Trade
and Industry visited China to articulate the concern of product
dumping to the Ethiopian market. The two nations have now signed a
Pre Shipment Inspection agreement.
The branch
office that Wegagen Bank had been planning for four mounths for the
border town of Togochalle, 745km east of Addis Abeba, finally opened
its doors on April 28, 2006.
Garad’s
Initiative Breaks National Athletics Record
Garad Plc has
paid 70,000 Br for promotions and has allocated more than 20,000 Br
worth of prizes as the official sponsor of this year’s Ethiopian
Athletics Championships that are being held between May 3 - 7, 2006.
City Admin Land
Allocation Sparks Dispute between YBP, NOC
The plot that was
awarded to both Yetebaberut Beherawi Petroleum (YBP) and the
National Oil Company (NOC) by the Addis Abeba City Administration’s
Land Administration and Development Authority has led the two local
oil companies to take their case before the courts.
At the Age of 60 Ethiopian Re-charts its Future Course
Charting a new course at the age of 60, will one of Africa’s prominent
airlines go as far as privatisation? The idea is being floated among several
people, including development partners and Ethiopian’s own staff, discovered
Tamrat G. Giorgis, Fortune Staff Writer
The Board of
Directors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has issues their intake on
the management of Ethiopia's economy last week. To its credit, they have applaud
the EPRDF-led government for .....
Last week, this
newspaper published an interesting query as to when the Ethiopian
Prime Minister would leave the political scene. Interestingly enough
and with his .....
The price of oil
in Ethiopia is totally blind to the signals from the international
market. While a price of a barrel of oil doubled from 40 dollars in
two years since 2004, Ethiopia’s ....
My tall Gojame friend called Thursday afternoon to kindly give me
some information that I needed. He enquired about what I was writing
about, and I ......
You pay 3.50 dallor for a latte. The coffee farmer earns 0.60
dallors for a pound of beans that will make 30 lattes. By now, it is
a familiar story. The story less often recounted is a ....
A co-worker and I were standing at a window shooting the
breeze when we noticed, in a villa across the road, that there was a
woman carrying a young child in the traditional Ethiopian way, piggy
back style........
The
bird flu syndrome (H5N1) and the trepidation of eating
chickens or eggs had stolen the limelight of public attention from
the Holiday celebrations of Easter without eating roosters. A few
days after the holidays, however, people have returned to feasting
on roosters and eggs and undermined the disturbing news associated
with the deadly pandemic virus.
The celebration
of Ethiopian Patriots Victory Day on Friday May 5, 2006 gave almost
every institution a second day off (the first having been
International Labour Day that was celebrated on Monday May 1, 2006)
during the last week. This was not the case with .....
