The Ministry of
Revenues (MoR) has notified flour mills across the country to pay
over 150 million Br for two years of Value Added Tax (VAT) that they
had failed to collect.
The Ministry
was able to determine the amount of uncollected VAT through
calculations done in a review of the monthly electricity bills
issued by the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo).
Sources
disclosed that a committee with members from the MoR, the Federal
Inland Revenue Authority (FIRA) and the Ethiopian Flour Mills
Association handed in their findings to the Ministry six months ago.
Searches to Begin for
Illegally Transferred Duty-Free Cars
The Ministry of
Revenues will start surprise searches looking for vehicles that came
into the country with a duty free privilege but have been sold to a
third party.
An official
from the Ministry told Fortune that the search will start on
September 6, 2006. An enforcement force from the Ethiopian customs
Authority and the Traffic police will do the search on the roads of
Addis Abeba. The search will focus on duty free vehicles that
entered the country and are now owned by a third party, as well as
144 vehicles which officials suspect of having entering the country
on forged documents.
The Ethiopian
Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) has cancelled the international
tender it issued 10 months ago to purchase 301 solar electricity
generators with capacities of 200 watts to 1,100 watts and the
batteries to accompany them; a tender valued at 120 million Br.
The ETC sent
out a letter on August 17, 2006, to the two remaining contending
bidders, British BP Solar and Irish NAPS telling them that it has
cancelled the tender, though it did not specify a reason.
The Addis Abeba
City Administration will hire an international consultancy firm in
order to improve its offices’ service rendering skills.
The
Administration, whose duties include collecting taxes, land
administration and information gathering along with other services
has allocated 10 million Br for a study of how its different offices
can provide faster services.
The
Administration will, in the next two months, issue an international
tender to contract a consultancy company that will conduct this
study.
The state owned Ethiopian
Insurance Corporation (EIC) has announced a 65 million Br profit in the recently
ended Ethiopian fiscal year.
The company secured a
profit that shows a decline of one million Birr from last year’s profit, when it
made 66 million Br. The profits made this year are approximately 2pc lower than
last year’s.
EIC was established
following the nationalisation of private insurance firms in the mid 1970s and
has been a dominant player in the industry, presently having over 48pc of the
market share. It was originally founded with 11 million Br paid up capital.
Meta Abo
Brewery is starting a 90 million Br expansion project. Meta Abo is
one of the three government breweries in the country and has a
current production capacity of 400,000 litres annually. The
expansion project is expected to increase its annual production by
40 per cent.
The expansion
project was approved by the Privatisation and Public Enterprise
Supervising Agency but was delayed as negotiations were underway
between the SESPA and the Kenyan East African Breweries to work on a
joint venture with Meta Abo.
During the
negotiations East African Breweries was set to own 50 per cent share
of Meta Abo above which it was asked to invest in the total capital
of Meta Abo to enter into a deal.
A construction
accident occurred at the construction site of the six four-storey
buildings on Fikre Mariam Aba Techan Street, in Yeka, being built
for the Ethio International Footwear Plaster Cooperative Society on
Tuesday August 22, 2006.
The National
Bio-Diesel Corporation Plc (NBC) received a 4,000ht plot in June and
has recieved another 1,000ha in the South Nations Nationalities
Peoples Regional State (SNNPRS) to plant jatropha and is negotiating
for more, which will be used to produce bio-diesel.
The 4,000ht
plot, which was leased at 117 Br per hectare, is located in Welayita
Zone, in the Affo district. According to Yeshitila Seifu, head of
potential studies and promotion department of the SNNPRS investment
commission, NBC has already started planting seedlings on the
Welayita plot the 1000ht is in Gamo Gofa.
The Addis Abeba
La garre Customs Office last week increased its working hours from
eight to 16 hours a day, more than a century after its
establishment.
The La garre
Customs Office was established following the opening of the Ethio-Djibouti
Railway Services, 116 years ago, and has always followed the same
working hours exercised in all governmental offices in the country,
of eight hours a day. On Wednesday August 23, 2006, the Office
doubled its working hours.
The Ministry of
Trade and Industry has requeasted that the Ethiopian Sugar Industry
Support Center (ESISC)assess the number of industries using sugar as
an input in their production and to submit a report outlining ways
to scale up sugar supply. The Agro-processing department in the
Ministry of Trade and Industry will take up this task.
Metehara, Wonji
Shoa and Fincha sugar factories produce 2.7 million quintals of
sugar every year, working at full capacity. As Metehara and Fincha
sugar factories have shown an increase in their production, the
country’s total sugar production has risen by 100,000 quintals,
amounting to a total of 2.8 million quintals of sugar in the current
fiscal year. The total annual consumption of the country is three
million quintals, with the largest portion attributed to household
use.
An upcoming flower exhibition in Moscow could offer numerous
opportunities for the expansion of flower exports from Ethiopia.
At least six local flower exporters will attend an international
flower exhibition that is being held in Moscow, Russia, from August
31 to September 03, 2006.
Some of the companies that will be attending the trade fair include
ET Highland PLc, Menagesha Flowers PLc, Dukda Flowers, Dire Highland
Flowers PLc, Summit Partners PLc, Rose Ethiopia, and Top Flowers PLc.
The Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) is collecting
financial data in order to cancel bills that have proven impossible
to collect.
In the last nine months, the Corporation's treasury department
managed to only 10.7 million Br of the 12.2 million Br that was
planned for.
According to officials from the Corporation, the explanations for
the uncollected bills vary from bills not being prepared on time or
having wrong dates, to delayed action in cases of over-billing and
extensions having been given in cases handled by the Corporation's
legal department.
A tender by the National Bank of Ethiopia for the installation of a
LAN in the new Academy of Financial Studies is reopened after an
insufficient number of companies presented bids.
The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) has cancelled the tender that it
previously issued for an IT company that was to install Local Area
Network (LAN) in the Academy of Financial Studies, located in the
Akaki area. It is releasing a new tender in its stead.
The Bank has allocated a budget of 10 million Br for the
installation of the LAN, yet was forced to cancel the tender that it
issued in June 2006 because too few companies were competing for the
project.
Shay Buna is a talk show that airs on ETV every Sunday from 11am to
12pm with a repeat showing on Wednesday nights at 10:45pm, right
after the ETV English News.
This program just recently celebrated its one-year anniversary on
July 11 2006 at the Sheraton Addis. Shay Buna dedicated four special
shows over four weeks in honor of its anniversary.
The talk show, which is hosted by Solomon Shumye, is an open panel
where members of the audience are encouraged to participate by
asking questions and commenting on each week’s selected topic.
On a recent trip to the Omo Valley, the Prime Minister had the
opportunity to observe the damage from recent floods and to meet
face to face with some of the victims of this disaster.
When the helicopter carrying Prime Minister Meles Zenawi reached
Toltale Island, no one rushed out to welcome him. The village he
landed in is one of 10 in Dasenech Woreda in the South Omo Zone of
the Southern Regional Sate and was a refuge for victims of the
floods that occurred in the region two weeks ago. Of the 120 people
awaiting the Prime Minister’s arrival, only one offered any
greeting. Despite the proffered greeting of Shiferaw Shigute, a
State administrator accompanying Meles, only one member of the group
stood to offer a welcome. This was the island’s chairman, Letekore
Yarechal.
In
Ethiopia's recent memory, floods have wreaked havoc all across the country.
Rivers from the Tekeze to the Awash and the Omo are bursting their banks and
causing devastating damage to people's lives and property. Though acknowledging
commendable and prompt public and government reactions to the relief efforts,
Lulseged Ayalew (PhD), a teacher at the Addis Abeba University, looks at the
situation in a larger context. Natural calamities appear to be worsening in
Ethiopia both in their frequencies and types: the rift valley volcano in Afar,
the earth crack in Ziway and Robi, as well as the landslides in Debre Sina and
Abay are part of the climatic changes under way in Ethiopia.
Two weeks ago,
Fortune asked - rhetorically - if the EPRDF was on a
publicity campaign. The answer was an unqualified yes, admitted as
much by the Prime Minister's public relations guru, Bereket Simon.
This week that
campaign reached almost unimaginable levels. Not only did the Prime
Minister appear with the common folk, but he took the show out to
the people instead of remaining confined to the cavernous reception
chambers of Arat Kilo.
Ideologies of any shape or form have had a short history in
Ethiopia. At best they are a little older than the generation that
is in charge of this country today; whether within the
establishment, the opposition (both parliamentary and the militant
Diaspora) or in business circles. Though admittedly there are
exceptions here, as in everything else. In this case, the bruised
and embattled Lidetu Ayalew & Co are perhaps the few guys in the
political scene that are younger than 40.
To say Ethiopia must generate greater internal resources in order to
be more economically self-sufficient and to finance its current
needs and future development is to state the obvious. Mobilising
internal resources - increasing their volume, changing their
structure and improving their allocation to productive investments -
offers a solution to the poverty-trap and facilitates harmonious
long-term growth.
Our development should principally depend on domestic resources and
it is possible to finance growth that is less dependent on external
resources, less inflationary and more sustainable.
I cannot speak for everyone, but when I was
growing up the idea of being rich and famous always appealed to me.
Nothing is as appealing to the youthful mind as entering the world
that you so admire, whether in books, in movies or even in the
fantasies that you conjure up in your head.
Take the industries of sports, of music, of
writing, of science or of anything and you’ll find that they all
really boil down to fame and fortune. People want to be
distinguished and recognised in their respective fields. It is an
age long search for greatness that human beings cannot seem to get
over.
Floods are drenching many of the lowlands located in the major river
basins of Ethiopia, including the Blue Nile, and neighbouring Sudan
has suffered floods at levels unknown in the last hundred years.
There is no time to pause for paying tributes and expressing sorrow
to the bereaved. There are now more people and places to worry
about. Heavy rain is predicted to fall at least for another month or
so and the quantity of water is threatening the integrity of dams
and big rivers in all parts of the country. River Baro is reported
to have swamped a section of Gambela and two men are reported dead
already.
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.
