Lion International
Bank, the newest bank to join nine operators in the banking
industry, has found a building in Addis Abeba where it will house
its main branch and headquarters.
Top managers of
the nation’s seventh private bank are negotiating with developers of
Lex Plaza, a modern 10-storey complex built on Haile Gebresellasie
Avenue. Lion Bank will have offices on the fourth and fifth floors
with its main branch on the ground floor.
Lion International
Bank, which has raised over 100 million Birr in hard capital, plans
to open 20 branches in the next five years; eight of them in the
first year, according to sources. Four will be in Addis Abeba while
the other four will serve regional towns Awassa, Adama (Nazareth),
Mekele and Bahir Dar.
Negussie Hailu, a
businessman who owns shares in East African Bottling, bottlers of
Coca Cola, was released on Wednesday morning, June 21, after serving
a 14-year sentence.
Nine of those
years were after a Federal High Court found him guilty of corruption
in a high profile case that involved former Defence Minister Tamrat
Layne. The latter is still serving his sentence, but also fighting
new charges brought against him four years ago.
While serving his
term, Negussie was indicted again in 2001, along with four others,
including Abate Kisho, former regional president of the Southern
Region, and Bitew Belay, then central committee member of the EPRDF.
Financed By France, Legadadi Water Expansion to Cost 100m Br
A feasibility study paving the way for the water reservoir
and purification project in Legadadi Dam has been completed,
conducted by a French firm for the past year.
Commissioned by the Addis Abeba Water and Sewerage
Authority (AAWSA), the study now awaits for the final nod by the
French government, which is expected to finance the project, its
third Addis Abeba water reservoir project.
The French seem to realize how acute the issue of water
provision will soon become in the capital, whose population growth
is a staggering 15pc per year. Although AAWSA provided 80 million
cubic meters of water last year, over 46pc of the capital's
residents did not get water, a size grown from 30pc almost 10 years
ago.
Addis Abeba seems to have been getting wild with football fervour
and quiet on everything else. The majority of city residents are
glued to TV screens, following the World Cup matches. But nowhere is
as fair in treating fans as Meskel Square, with both the haves,
sitting in their cars, and the have-nots, lined up on the floor, all
sharing a 48sqm colour screen. When the matches started two weeks
ago, there were only a few people scattered around the huge tract at
the square. Now, more cars and pedestrians are drawn to the screen,
like on this photo taken Saturday afternoon when Germany played
against Sweden. The host country won the game
No
bidders were found to import the year's last lot of fertilizer
floated by the National Bank of Ethiopia's (NBE) in a public tender
last month. Ironically, this will also be the last tender to be
issued and managed by the central bank that has been doing the job
for the past 14 years.
The procurement of fertilizers, usually DAP and Urea, will be handed
over to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD)
whose minister, Addisu Legesse, is also deputy prime minister. The
Ministry feels that it is closer to the rural community than a
central bank in charge of foreign exchange management.
A new joint
venture company between German and Gulf interests, Al Nile Business
Group (ANBG), is to open a new factory in Addis that manufactures
polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
PVC is a
lightweight, durable, weather-resistant and waterproof construction
material extruded into pipe, house siding, and gutters. Al Nile is
establishing the manufacturing plant after two years of study
conducted in four East African countries.
Two state owned
companies are joining the efforts by the Ministry of Health to see
long lasting insecticide tested nets produced locally. Their
distribution is hoped to reduce the rate of malaria infection.
Health
authorities in the Ministry would like to see production begin in
2007, working with Adami Tulu Pesticides Processing S.C. and Ethio-Japan
Nylon Textile Factory.
The country’s
first state-of-the-art flower farm facility, already incorporating
four growers and seven breeders, will be inaugurated on July 1,
2006, by Girma Birru, minister of Trade and Industry, and high
profile personalities from Kenya, company sources said.
The Ethiopian
Sugar Industries Support Centre (ESISC) had to hold back on hiring
an alternative firm to transport molasses from Wonji Shewa and
Methara sugar factories to the Port of Djibouti, after it had failed
to attract an interested company.
The Centre had
floated a competitive bid for interested transporters, which
involved moving 70,000tn of molasses, a dark brown viscous liquid
obtained as a by-product in the processing of sugar, especially cane
sugar. It is used in making industrial alcohol, for cooking, and for
feeding stock.
East Africa
Bottling, franchiser of Coca Cola and related brands in Ethiopia, is
one of the three bidders interested to enter into a joint venture
(JV) arrangement with the nation’s oldest mineral water bottler,
Ambo Mineral Water Factory.
Ambo was first
established in the town of Ambo by businessman Teferi Sharew in
1931. It was transferred to the Imperial estate and finally
nationalized by the Derg in the mid 1970s. Located in Senkele-Ambo
woreda, 130Km west of Addis, in Oromia Regional State, the factory
wants to partner itself with an outside company to triple its
capacity.
Faced with a
chronic cement shortage that risks derailing condominium construction,
an expert committee of the Addis Abeba City Administration is seriously
considering re-opening the Addis Abeba Cement Factory, 10 years after it
was closed for environmental reasons. The expert committee was formed by
the City Administration Housing Agency and Mugar Cement Factory to
assess options in tackling the current shortage.
Taking
advantage of the European Union’s (EU) offer benefiting least
developed countries, the Ethiopian Sugar Industries Support Centre (ESISC)
is to export 22,000tn of raw sugar to Europe later this year. This
is the largest amount the country will be exporting since the
policy’s inception in 2001.
Under its
‘Everything but Arms’ preferential trade arrangement, the EU gives
Ethiopia and 18 other poor countries the privilege to export goods
free of official quotas and tariffs. The Ethiopian sugar industry
has benefited the most so far, exporting raw and white sugar every
year.
The Board of
Directors of the World Bank has approved a series of loans amounting
to 274 million dollars and a grant of 15 million dollars to
Ethiopia, geared towards triggering market friendly reforms,
according to the Bank.
The new loans
were advanced to Ethiopia with caution however. The Bank is
concerned with the ambitiousness of some of the projects and the
increasing price of bitumen in the international market its experts
project will inflate the cost of road constructions in Ethiopia.
No interested
bidder showed up at a public auction on June 15, 2006, to buy the
assets of the Africa Engineers Construction S.C., one of the first
private construction firms established following the change of
government in the early 1990s.
It was the
second auction to be held since the company’s owners decided to
liquidate the firm in 2004. The owners went to the federal high
court declaring bankruptcy; a ruling was served to auction all its
properties and distribute to the 1,300 shareholders.
Star Business
Group and MIDROC Ethiopia are in preparations to enter cement
production, pursuing a location not too far from each other. The
resource concession is located in the Dejen area of the Amhara
Regional State, 229Km north of Addis Abeba.
MIDROC and Star
want to set up cement factories in the regional state, after retail
prices of cement hit the roof with a quintal of cement getting to
200 Br. The demand for cement is far higher than what the three
factories could provide. Muger, Messobo and Dire Dawa have a total
production capacity of 1.6 million tonnes of cement a year, with the
first taking the lion share of 900,000tn. The current demand for
cement, however, is estimated to stand at 2.4 million tonnes.
An extraordinary process is
unfolding in the Ethiopian political scene that some in parliamentary
circles are hoping will define intra-party relationships quite radically.
Various political parties who command a significant presence in the Ethiopian
parliament are engaged in behind-closed-door negotiations to create a consensus
even before they meet at Arat Kilo.
In the process, the ruling Revolutionary Democrats and both
the new and veteran parliamentary opposition groups are completely rethinking
their attitudes to doing political business.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, the high priest of development economics, and also
director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, seems to have given up
hope on politicians from both developed and poor countries. In his desperate
hope to see the world succeed in its target to halve poverty in 2015, he turned
to a model and effort put foreward by a private charity, Rotary International.
He is impressed by Rotary’s recent initiative against polio and sees it as a
model to eradicate poverty. Others should follow suit in fighting hunger and
disease in Africa, he says.
At an eatery at
the heart of Piazza where I often go for lunch, the place was less
crowded than it used to be. I was prompted to ask the owner why the
lunchtime crowd was getting smaller these days. He was frank enough
to reveal the reason.
“The economy,”
he said. “People can’t afford a decent meal these days and prices
are going up!”
The place I am
talking about is among the more affordable ones in the area. Yet,....
It was indeed
shocking to the South African public when they came to learn why
their police budget was high: the police employed private security
firms to protect its facilities. The level of crime in South Africa,
particularly in Johannesburg, is too appalling to be controlled by
members of the police only. The gap between the haves and have-nots
is perhaps the largest in South Africa than anywhere else in the
world. Thus, many attribute this to aghast crime rate there.
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 ......
I thought of
this issue over a year ago and have been tinkering with it ever
since. It is all about the great opportunities we are missing as a
result of failure to recognize or understand the significance of
athletics to the country’s economy. As we all know, Ethiopia has a
long and rich athletics tradition but so far has not made the most
of it.
I am not very good at keeping secrets. It is not because I
do not think that there are certain things that should not be
divulged to others. On the contrary, I know that there are a lot of
things that should be between yourself and the powers that be or
between yourself and .......
Cynics may
think that it is idle talk to care about stray animals when there
are thousands of human beings that lack basic means to subsist.
There are others who have a lot to say about the subject of animal
care. I do not know what cynics will say when they find out a non
governmental organization that shelters and cares for unwanted
animals has been functioning in Addis Abeba for the past three
years. You cannot blame the cynics for thinking in a poor light when
thousands of homeless children in the streets have no one to look
after them.
For the first time in its 60-year history, Ethiopian
Airlines has made an unprecedented move, leasing an aircraft from
Boeing's archrival, Airbus. It was indeed a breakthrough to the
European aircraft maker, while it might have gotten under the skin
of those at the Boeing, managing the Ethiopian account.
