The National
Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) is to re-tender the printing of new notes
after a controversial French company original given the job failed
to complete the delivery of new notes three months after deadline.
In order to
replace notes that are no longer usable or already taken out of
circulation, the central bank placed orders to international
companies for the printing of new notes.
Francois
Charles Oberthur Fiduciaire (FCOF), a French company whose managers
are being pursued by Kenyan anticorruption crusaders in relation to
a multimillion dollar probe, was contracted by the NBE in October
last year to print four billion Birr worth of notes with different
denominations.
Four trucks
carrying heavy construction equipment for Salini Costruttori SPA
have been stuck for eight days at one end of Abay Bridge, denied
permission to cross to the other side by the Ethiopian Roads
Authority (ERA).
Loaded with a
tunnel boring machine (TBM) weighing 275tns, the trucks are headed
to the Beles Project in East Gojjam Zone, Amhara Regional State
where the Ethiopian Power Electric Corporation (EEPCo) awarded
Salini in July 2005, a 5.4 billion Br turnkey project to build the
country’s largest hydroelectric dam ever, on the river of Beles,
600Km west of Addis. When completed, the dam could generate 460mw
electric power.
Salini started
mobilizing for the project almost as soon as the contract was
signed. Heavy construction equipment, like the TBM, is an important
part of the project. The machine, disassembled onto the four trucks
for the journey, was imported from Italy along with the trucks.
Sur
to Challenge Foreign Firms on Railway Rehabilitation
Sur
Construction S.C., a firm under the EFFORT umbrella, was the only
local company to challenge foreign companies, mainly from Europe, in
their bid to take over the most daunting and expensive project in
the rehabilitation of the 89-year old Ethio-Djibouti Railway.
Sur was the
only Ethiopian company to attend the Tuesday, June 27th pretender
meeting at the Addis Abeba Enterprise headquarters. It is competing
against five European companies and one South African to
rehabilitate 114Km of the 781Km railway, stretching from Dire Dawa
to Dewele station and around Hurrso.
Hutine Montate
Ltd and Doprastav a.s from Slovakia, Hauring bou GmbH from Germany,
Consta from Italy, TSO SA from France and Grainker Lennings Rail
Services from South Africa will challenge Sur in their bid.
To the delight of
the private media, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is now in the habit of
conducting a regular press conference where members of the press are
invited to attend. For the third time since assuming his latest term in
office, Meles has met journalists from the international press corps and
those working for the English language press.
The press
conference was conducted in English, while the Prime Minister had a
separate encounter with the state owned electronic media the same day,
June 27.
The Ethiopian
Hotels and Tourism Institute (EHTI) will become one of the first
launching pads for the Ministry of Education to experiment its newly
designed vocational curriculum. This new system of coursework
creation comes after complaints regarding the practical ability of
recent vocational school out for apprenticeship in the workplace.
The Institute,
established in 1969 on Ras Mekonnen Avenue, will start offering
courses beginning next academic year following these newly set
requirements the Ministry hopes will change the quality of technical
and vocational training in the country.
Two
nongovernmental organizations, Farm Africa and SOS Sahel, were
granted six million euros by the Netherlands, Ireland and Norway
embassies for a Bale region sustainable management program.
The two NGOs are
to perform rehabilitation work in the Bale forest in the Oromia
region. The idea behind the well-financed program, according to the
three donor embassies, is to rehabilitate the area and provide
environmental training to the local pastoralist population.
The Adaba Dodola section of the Bale forest, is one of 58
natural forests in Ethiopia and 35 in the Oromia region alone. The
project will cover the Bale and West Arsi Zone with its 13 woredas.
Planning to
introduce an electronic payment card system, Wegagen Bank opened a
public tender on Friday, June 30, to select a company that could
deliver the service. It will become the second company after Dashen
Bank to launch such a system.
An electronic
payment system enable banks to offer debit cards to their customers
that allows them to directly withdraw funds from an account at the
time of purchase, much like writing a check.
The Ethiopian
Transport Authority (ETA) is to buy 25 car speed radars to be
employed in Addis Abeba by its own staff. Authorities are alarmed by
the rate of traffic accidents in the capital and are struggling to
bring some form of discipline; authority research has revealed that
drivers are at fault for close to 80pc of the accidents.
Eight radars
were bought in 2003 and put to use on the Addis-Modjo corridor,
informally known as the killing field of Ethiopia. The new
acquisitions will be the second by the Authority.
Members of
Parliament requested a salary increase last week at a meeting
scheduled to debate the country’s latest budget amounting to 35.4
billion Br.
The government
budget has increased by 5.4 billion Br compared to last year. The
budget increase helps ensure food security, reduce inflationary
pressure on the economy and increase Ethiopia’s GDP per capita to
155 dollars, according to Sufian Ahmed, minister of Finance and
Economic Development.
The Federal
Investment Agency has released an investment manual, in response to
needs by would-be investors who take out investment licences but
fail to start operation.
The manual was
made public on Monday, June 26, at a meeting of heads of trade and
investment bureaus from the regional states, chaired by Girma Birru,
minister of Trade and Industry. The manual advises investment
bureaus officials on how to best ensure investors do not fail in
realizing their projects.
Although the
federal investments agency claims to have registered 17,000
investors since 1992, only 20pc of those are believed to be
operational.
The Ministry of
Transport and Communications has expressed its interest in occupying
a lavish college facility left idle for almost a year. It submitted
its request to the Prime Ministers’ Office, asking to be given the
facility built originally by the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) in
the Akaki-Kaliti District, at a cost of close to 120 million Birr.
The facility,
meant to house the Ethiopian Academy of Financial Studies, formerly
known as the Ethiopian Insurance and Banking Institute, was built on
a 165,000sqm land outside the town of Akaki. It has a capacity to
train 500 resident students at a time, specializing in finance.
The cabinet of
the Addis Abeba City Caretaker Administration has appointed Dr.
Wubeshet Berhanu, also the general manager of the city, to chair the
most powerful boards in the municipality, the Land Development and
Administration Board, a.k.a. the lease board.
The Board will
start acting once member briefing is completed in a month and half,
city officials told Fortune.
Frustrated at
not having found a solution locally, the Development Bank of
Ethiopia (DBE) is interested in floating a new tender to attract
international companies in buying a glucose manufacturing plant
closed for the past three years.
The Banks
search for a buyer through negotiation failed for the second time
last week. This effort followed three failed tenders floated to
auction the properties of Lifeline Solutions S.C.
The
International Cargo Aviation Services (ICAS), a private company
contracted to manage cargo entering Bole International Airport, has
suffered a devastating loss of business, following the inauguration
of Ethiopian Airlines’ new cargo terminal.
ICAS is a
subsidiary of MIDROC Ethiopia. Its siter company, MIDROC
Construction, built the competing terminal at a cost of 133.1
million Br. The national airline inaugurated the modern cargo
terminal in May 2006, in the presence of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
Al Nile
Business Group, a joint venture of companies from Germany and the
United Arab Emirates, has been awarded a 5.2 million Br contract to
dig 12 of the 30 wells the Addis Abeba Water Sewerage Authority (AAWSA)
would like to develop in three locations of the capital.
The water
generated from these wells will be integrated with existing
networks, according to experts from AAWSA.
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.
In the midst of controversy
and in the absence of clarity on exactly who they are, those who form the
Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia surprised the world with their total
control of the ruined capital, Mogadishu. Businesses in the city seem to have
found what they were longing for: peace and stability. This is good, believes
Costantinos Berhe Tesfu (PhD), although he looks at the flip side of ICU
rule from Mogadishu.
According to a journalistic cliché, there is no news as
good as bad news. For the Ethiopian government, however, what makes
news these days is only good news about the economy. Judging by
recent developments, bad news is either deliberately left unreported
or reported badly.
Many years from now, students of parliamentary politics
might distinguish two phases in the evolution of the post-1991
parliament in Ethiopia. They
could probably say that the first phase that runs roughly from 1995
to 2005 (the first four years were transitional in their nature) was
characterized by the absolute domination of the ruling EPRDF. It had
almost turned the highest law making body into a rubber stamp
institution.
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 ......
During the past
century, environmental economics has joined the mainstream
discourse. Hence, factors that pollute our environment are given
attention with a view to spin sustainable development.
When I was young,
members of my family that were good and decent irritated the hell
out of me. I always felt the only reason that these people as the
way they were was because they were forced to be so. If they found
the things I did or thought were outlandish or vulgar, I always had
a nagging feeling that they were constrained by something to judge
in the way that they did.
Every country
has its food culture. Maize and sorghum are staples in many parts of
Ethiopia, not to mention meat. The highlanders usually consume teff,
millet and barley. Inset (false banana root) is an important
recipe in many other parts of Ethiopia, particularly in the Southern
nations. Cosmopolitan dwellers in Addis and the major towns enjoy
cocktails. In the western world, you may encounter people tasting
ice cream or munching cookies as they walk. Here you find youngsters
grinding sugarcane with their beautiful teeth and enjoying its sweet
juice or eating roasted maize. Many poor people get through their
day with the energy they get from the sugarcane or one or two bites
of sweet potatoes.
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.
