United Closing in on
Salini’s 100m Br Insurance Contract
The Italian
construction firm, Salini Costruttori S.P.A, is under negotiation to
buy an insurance policy from United Insurance to cover its 15
billion Br hydroelectric power project awarded a month ago, sources
disclosed.
The private
insurer will enter an underwriting deal worth 100 million Br, an
amount, industry observers believe, that will become the largest for
a private company since the emergence of private insurance companies
in the early 1990s. Established in 1994, it was the first company to
merge with Lion insurance, a move that increased its shareholder
base to 215. United Insurance has a paid up capital of 37.7 million
Br.
The Gilgel Gibe
III project, which was signed between EEPCo and Salini on July 19,
2006, is one of the biggest projects ever awarded in Ethiopia.
Claudio Lautixi,
International Division’s General Manager of Salini
Eyesuswork Zafu, Managing Director
of United Insurance
The
Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) has allocated 95 million Br for
the procurement of office equipment for all its branches located
across the country, sources disclosed. This decision came after the
Bank sent its top executives on a one-week field visit, at the end
of July 2006, to 11 districts where 144 of its total 174 branches
are found.
A
top management meeting presided by Abe Sanu, president of CBE since
February 2006, decided that the branches visited outside of Addis
Abeba did not have necessary office facilities, sources said. The
management’s decision presented to board of directors on Monday,
August 14, 2006, was approved.
Meles Pushes
Privatization of Southern Farm Enterprise
Prime Minister
Meles Zenawi has put together a taskforce that will determine the
modalities of privatizing the Semien Omo Agricultural Development
Enterprise, located in the country’s Southern Regional State around
Arba Minch, 488kms south of Addis Abeba.
The taskforce,
which is led by the State Minister of Agriculture and Rural
Development, Abera Derassa (PhD), is also in charge of overseeing
the building of slaughterhouses in Arba Minch. This taskforce was
created in June 2006 and is responsible for handing in a monthly
report to the Prime Minister.
Girma Wake, the
Ethiopian Airlines CEO has been awarded the Individual Achievement
Award at the Annual Aviation & Allied Business Leadership Conference
held in Dakar, Senegal, on August 1 and 2, 2006.
Girma received
his award on the second day of the conference, theme “Air Transport
in Africa Moving with the World,” from Senegal’s Minister of Tourism
and Air Transport, Ousmane Ndiaye.
The certificate
noted that Girma has been awarded for his contribution to the
development of the aviation industry in the continent.
According to an
African aviation official, Girma has been awarded the achievement
award due to Ethiopian’s success in the African industry in
particular.
City to Reclaim
Industrial Land from Idle Investors
The Addis Ababa
Investment Authority is going to reclaim land from 100 companies out
of the 324 it leased land to in the Akaki Kaliti Industrial Zone in
2004 and 2005.
The authority
had set aside 67ht of land for the industrial zone out of which it
has leased out 1000sqm to 10,000sqm plots for the textile, leather,
plastic, paper, construction and metal industries.
The land will
be reclaimed from the companies as they either did not start
operation or they used the land for other purposes.
The Addis Abeba
Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association’s (AACCSA) plan of
launching construction to build its ambitious international trade
centre has faced delays due to land disputes with companies leasing
plots around its location, a vast tract of land in front of the CMC
residential complex.
The Chamber’s
plot was found to overlap with those leased to Country Trading, an
importing company entering the hotel business, and the Ethiopian
Water Sports Federation. The Chamber remains dissatisfied with the
solution offered by city authorities.
The Ministry of
Works and Urban Development is setting up ten new project offices
that will support the ministry’s massive housing project beginning
next month.
The Ministry,
which was created in September 2005, developed an industry and urban
development package four months ago. The package envisages building
396,000 houses in 72 towns.
The first phase
intends to construct 60,500 houses in 33 towns in a one-year period.
Of these, 1650 houses will be built in Dire Dawa and another 4950
houses will be built in Awassa.
These housing
construction projects are expected to cut the country’s estimated
housing shortage of 900,000 houses by half.
Proclamation to End Self-Regulation at Post Office
The Ministry of
Transport and Communications (MTC) is to present for approval by the
Council of Ministers a proclamation draft prepared by the Ethiopian
Telecommunications Agency (ETA).
The
proclamation is to re-establish the ETA as the Ethiopian
Communications Authority. As an authority, it will not only be
regulating the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC), which
the agency has been doing since its creation in 1996, but will also
monitor the Express Mailing Service (EMS) and the Ethiopian Postal
Service (EPS).
Controversy Continues as ETA Releases Transporter
Specifications
After the
Ethiopian Transport Authority (ETA) lifted the two-year old ban on
the importation of fuel trucks, it has now released specifications
the trucks should fulfill to qualify for importation.
The authority
released the specifications on August 7 and has already received
complaints from fuel transporter companies. The directive, which
lifted the ban of bringing in fuel trucks into the country, was
released on July 13. This directive has caused disagreement between
the ETA and the transporter sector.
Although the
Authority made amendments to certain directive articles, the
transporters were still not pleased and wrote a letter of complaint
to the Prime Minister's Office.
The Addis Abeba
Exhibition Center has awarded Healthy Restaurant the concession for
the center’s restaurant space after it won the tender, which was
floated on July 14, 2006 at the center’s conference hall. Healthy
restaurant has been awarded the tender for 21,000 Br a month, which
will last for two years.
According to
information from the center, over 30 stakeholders bought the
document, although only seven bidders that qualified for the bid
attended the tender. These bidders included Endale and Family Plc,
A.G. Restaurant, Demi Restaurant, Jimma Hotel, and Healthy
Restaurant. Endale and Family Plc offered the lowest price, 11,000
Br, and A.G. offered the highest, at 31,000 Br per month. Although
A.G. offered the highest, Healthy Restaurant, the second highest
bidder with 21,000 Br, was awarded the tender.
US Storage System to Shield Produce from Pests, Moisture
HiTec Trading,
a local company, has imported a sample of an air and moisture tight
storage system, from a US based company called GrainPro Inc. The
system is intended to replace conventional metal silos that often
leave agricultural goods too exposed to the elements.
The plastic
storage units come in two types. The first, called “Cocoon”, can
hold more than 10tn of product and is used for warehousing. It is
canvas-like and fit to preserve agricultural goods. The other, known
as the Super Grain Bag, is a much smaller version of the Cocoon,
holding up to 100kg.
The Documents
Authentication and Registration Office (DARO) has opened its first
branch office outside of Addis Abeba. DARO registers, cancels and
authenticates legal documents such as memorandum of association
orpower of attorney. The office earns an average of 25 to 30 million
Br annually.
DARO works
under the federal Ministry of Justice after it was re-established in
June, 2005. DARO used to be called Addis Abeba City Acts and
Documents Registration Office and was under the Addis Abeba City
Administration.
Joining the
World Trade Organisation may seem quite an abstract proposition to
millions of Ethiopians. It is often hard to tell how exactly
acceding to the WTO could possibly change the life and livelihood of
regular folk.
Alemu Duber, a
48-year old dairy farmer from Sheno, 78Km from Addis Abeba in the
Oromia region’s Kimbibit woreda, has an answer. Sheno’s butter is a
well-known household name for its taste and quality in all regions
of the country as well as abroad. Of the 25,000 residents in
Kimbibit, around 5,000 live in Sheno and its environs; and according
to the information from the woreda office, most of the inhabitants
are farmers, involved in cattle farming and making their living out
of selling dairy products.
Trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO)
suffered a series of setbacks at the end of last month; followed by the European
Union trade negotiators trading blame with their American counterparts and those
from the Group 20. It seems that the general consensus
Aid thinking
moves in policy cycles, and the dogma for now, at least for the big
European donors, is to give aid directly to governments. It is not
given completely blindly, of course, and developing countries have
to put in place poverty reduction strategies that add up.
Once locked up
in Soviet jails after being "convicted" of treason and espionage,
Anatoly Borisovitch Sharansky, a.k.a. Natan Sharansky, later became
a strong influence on George W. Bush's outlook of how the world
should be. The US President even publicly said that one of
Sharansky's two books, "The Case for Democracy . . ." is what he
recommends opinion-makers read.
Trucks with heavy loads
deteriorate road infrastructure disproportionably. That is why so many of the
country's main routes are coming apart so quickly. In order to stave off
complete destruction of our roads, legal norms need to be perfected and, above
all, enforced.
As my week
progressed, I was getting the same comment from a number of people.
It was said at the most random of moments, sort of as a sidebar, and
the funny thing about the whole thing is that the people that said
it were from diverse walks of life.
Potholes on the
streets of Addis have been subjects of discussion year in and year
out. Reckless taxi drivers and frustrated motorists get fun out of
splashing muddy water on pedestrians, particularly on well-dressed
men and on jolly girls slowly walking across the roads.
Lack of
continuity has become a curse to Ethiopia, it appears. And not only
with governments changing as often as they do around here. A change
of top officials in a ministry as old as the Ministry of Education
could have the unfortunate consequence of repeating past mistakes,
for the current bosses may have no idea what went wrong with
proposals submitted to the cabinet by their predecessors.
