Min.
of Mines Suspends EEPCo’s Environmentally Suspect Project
An expensive
project by the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo) in the
Yayu Wereda of the Illubabur Zone, Oromia
Regional State, has been terminated by the Ministry of Mines due to
environmental concerns.
Last week, the
State Minister of Mines and Energy, Sinkinesh Ejigu, wrote a letter
to EEPCo managers announcing that the 500 million dollar Yayu Coal
Mine and Coal Fired Thermal Power Plant Complex Project should be
terminated.
The project has
been terminated as it is not currently a government priority, an
official of the ministry say.
Moges Chemere, former
president of the Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE), was released from jail on
Friday, September 8, 2006, after securing a 5,000 Br bail with the Federal High
Court. He had been under arrest at the Kaliti prison for the past five months.
He was accused of approving
loans totalling 86.7 million Br to Addis Industrial and Almi Corporation on
March 31, 2005. Although he was fired from the executive position he had held at
the Bank for 10 years, investigators at the Federal Ethics and Anticorruption
Commission arrested him on April 7, 2006, together with Kidane Nikodimos,
president of Wegagen Bank.
Kidane had
served DBE under Moges before he moved to Wegagen three years ago.
He was arrested and accused of granting “undertaking” to these
companies when they opened a 6.6 million dollar letter of credit at
the DBE.
The Commercial
Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), which declared a staggering 1.1 billion Br
gross profit in the just-ended fiscal year, has started, although
belatedly, paying a two-month bonus to its staff on Saturday,
September 9, after management and labour leaders reached a
half-hearted settlement to their dispute.
The Bank's board
of directors, chaired by Mekonnen Manyazewal, also state minister of
Finance and Economic Development, met last week and approved a bonus
worth two-month's salary for the staff of the CBE in connection to
the Ethiopian New Year. The management has also been directed by the
Board to produce a study for future salary increments, according to
a board member.
The nomination
of Donald Y. Yamamoto by President George W. Bush to serve as
ambassador to Ethiopia was made public on Friday, September 8, 2006.
According to a statement released by the Whitehouse, the President
has also nominated four and designated one individual to serve in
his Administration.
A career member
of the senior foreign service of the United States, Mr. Yamamoto
will become the 32nd U.S. ambassador in Ethiopia since 1905,
provided that Congress endorses his appointment. He is currently a
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of African Affairs
at the Department of State.
Transport truck
owners opposing the directive that lifted the two-year oil truck
importation ban by the Federal Transport Authority (FTA) had decided
to organise a peaceful demonstration on Tuesday, September 5, 2006.
The demonstration has been postponed for a week.
The
postponement occurred because the office that registers
demonstrations under the Addis Abeba City Administration requested
that the oil truck owners make the protest march a last resort and
that they first exhaust attempts to speak with the FTA before
resuming with their demonstration.
The 11
companies that are in charge of transporting fuel purchased from
Sudan for the Ethiopian Petrol Enterprise (EPE) have been disputing
the directive released by the FTA for over a month.
An urgent
meeting of shareholders was called on Friday, September 8, 2006, by
the Board of Directors of Wegagen Bank, to decide on the fate of
Kidane Nikodemos, president of the Bank for six years, that was
suspended in May 2006.
Held at the
Ghion, the meeting was prompted by pressure from some of the 320
shareholders that have been pushing for a lasting resolution in the
matter. According to reliable sources, Kidane attended the meeting
in order to explain his position to the shareholders.
The Office of the
Prime Minister has suspended talks concerning a 2,835sqm plot that
sparked a dispute between the Addis Abeba City Administration’s Land
Development and Administration Lease Board and the Confederation of
Ethiopian Trade Unions (CETU).
A letter written
on Friday, August 25, 2006 by Berhanu Adelo, head of the Prime
Minister’s Office, stated that any kind of development on the plot
should be suspended and could not be resumed until the dispute
between the two bodies had been resolved.
A committee has
been formed to examine the clash that has ensued between the Lease
Board and the Confederation.
Owners of freight
transport trucks are signing a petition in protest of the Ethiopian
government’s decision to allow MIDROC Derba Plc. to import 800
trucks duty-free for transporting cement.
Out of the 1,200
truck owners working in the transport sector, 300 owners have
written a letter protesting the permit issued by the government to
MIDROC Derba, which allows them to import the trucks.
In order to
alleviate the shortage of cement in the country, the Ministry of
Trade and Industry (MoTI) gave MIDROC Derba the go-ahead on the
importation of 1.5 million tons of cement into Ethiopia; the
agreement between the Ministry and Derba was signed on June 30,
2006.
Sher
Ethiopia Plc, a Dutch company that is located on a 350hct of land in
Zway, 163km south-east of Addis Ababa, requested an additional
250hct of land for its expansion project from the Ministry of Trade
and Industry.
Sher Ethiopia
requested this additional plot from the ministry as it required more
land from the Zway Farm Development Enterprise, a government
enterprise, adjacent to its existing plot of land.
The Enterprise
falls under the Privatisation and Public Enterprises Supervising
Agency (PPESA), which is accountable to MoTI.
The Ethiopian
Sugar Industry Support Centre has again designated the Tana Fuel
Tanker Owners Association to transport its molasses, a dark brown
viscous liquid obtained as a by-product in the processing of sugar,
especially cane sugar, from Metehara to Djibouti.
The Tana Fuel
Tanker Owners Association was established in 2002, with a capacity
of 482 trucks. The association founders were employees of the Mobil
Oil East Africa Ltd, when they were fired from Mobil they went on a
demonstration asking the government to assign them a contract. After
they organised themselves as Tana, the Ethiopian Fuel Enterprise put
them on the Sudan-Gondar road transporting 80pc of the country’s
fuel into the country.
Pharmaceutical
Companies in Ethiopia and high-ranking government officials convened
for the second time last week, on September 1, 2006.
Present at the
meeting were owners of 11 pharmaceutical companies currently working
in the country; from the Ministry of Trade and Industry, state
minister, Tadesse Haile; from the Ministry of Health, state
minister, Dr. Kebede Worku and Beyenne GebreMeskel, director of the
Privatisation and Public Enterprises Supervising Agency.
Six staff members
of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) resigned last week, after a
disagreement with the management over their post-graduate studies.
These employees were served notice by the management to terminate
their regular classes at the Addis Abeba
University. The alternatives: either discontinuing their studies or
signing a commitment contract that will guarantee that they will
work for the CBE for five years after graduation.
The resignations
of these bank employees, who had been working at the headquarters
and the Finfine Branch for different lengths of time, ranging from
eight to 10 years, were accepted by the management last week.
A 30 million Br
garment factory constructed in Akaki district of Oromia Regional
State, 30Km south east of Addis Abeba, will be inaugurated next
Saturday, September 16. The President, Girma W. Giorgis, is
scheduled to open the launching of the factory built by Novastar
Construction Plc, according to a press release issued last week by
the company, Novastar Garment Plc.
Novastar
Garment, owned by Ethiopian-born Bekele Zeleke, will become the 32nd
garment factory now in operation, of which four are owned by the
state. The ones already in operation exported close to 11.1 million
dollars of textile products in the last Ethiopian fiscal year,
according to the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Italy took the
largest share of 22.6pc from the 31 countries that bought textile
and garment products from Ethiopia during this period.
The inter-clan
conflict in Somalia has been a cause of concern lately, with the
emergence of a militant group that is now Supreme Islamic Council of
Somalia (SICS) and put a military challenge to the Transitional
Federal government (TFG) that is now limited in Badoa. Controlling
the capital Mogadishu and much of the southern parts of Somalia, the
group counts much of its international support from Eritrea, Egypt
and Libya, if not Saudi Arabia's wealthy supporters of the expansion
of Wahabism, according to this writer known as Antony Shaw, a
pseudo-name but with an authoritative analysis of events in Ethiopia
and the surrounding countries.
Seyoum Bereded, 41, came to the public scene shortly after Seyoum Mesfin,
minister of Foreign Affairs, appointed him to lead a secretariat in charge of
the Ethiopian Millennium celebration. It will comprise a series of events
beginning on September 10, 2007.
Seyoum heads a secretariat
of four people: Abebe Balcha, Mulugeta Asrate Kassa and Yohannes G. Sellasie.
This group reports to an executive committee chaired by Minister Seyoum, who
last week invited about 120 people to constitute the National Millennium
Council, an entity whose creation was officially approved by the Council of
Ministers last year.
In 2003, at
the instigation of the German Development Service (DED) and
Kindernothilfe (a German NGO focused on children,) the self
help group (SHG) approach was introduced to Ethiopia. This
approach has had a direct impact on targeted communities, improving
livelihoods and living conditions, increasing unity and social ties,
promoting healthy practices and motivating the social and financial
emancipation of women.
The SHG
approach is based upon the idea that poverty is not simply material
in nature, but that it is a cyclical process of disempowerment that
is experienced through the denial of choices, rights and
opportunities; through discrimination, disparity, subjugation,
displacement and a myriad of dehumanising experiences.
The boom in
the construction sector, particularly seen in housing development,
has led to somewhat of a decline in the cost of rentals. Granted the
sector is facing some problems lately due to the shortage in cement,
it still holds true that more spaces have been made available for
both living and business and that the average tenant now has a lot
more options to choose from.
Prior to the
slowdown a few months ago, there were considerable incentives that
were being given out to real-estate developers, leading to the peak
in that sector and the growth of the capital today. Availability of
land and tax breaks were two of the enticements that were given to
private investors.
Aida Ashenafi
is a pioneer in the evolution of the Ethiopian music video industry.
This Ethiopian-born, American-raised and educated woman has played a
leading role in the production of the two Johnny Ragga music videos,
Habeshawi and Kulfun Sichign, both of which have been
nominated for Best Music Video in the Reggae Category in Africa and
East Africa respectively. The results of the nominations will be
aired on Channel “O”, which is the network responsible for
organising these awards.
Aida, who came
back to Ethiopia seven years ago, decided to get involved in the
music video scene when she heard Johnny’s music. She immediately
realised that his work was the type of material that she not only
related to, but that could easily cross over from the Ethiopian
context to a larger, more international audience.
The sensational singer, Tewodros Kassahun, a.k.a Teddy
Afro, walked away from a deal with the Sheraton Addis to
perform at the Ethiopian New Year’s concert. Teddy and
the Hotel had agreed on a contract worth over 130,000 Br
for an overnight performance. The song that he produced
for his third album, Redemption, is believed to be the
cause of his decision to break up the deal. Those who
negotiated on behalf of the Hotel wanted him to drop the
idea of playing Redemption, a song written by Teddy,
which talks about national reconciliation.
Conflicting
shopping capacities were observed during the New Year’s market, but
many shoppers shared complaints that “life is expensive.” This
opinion is supported by the rise in figures on the official Consumer
Price Index (CPI), an indicative figure that shows changes in the
prices that consumers pay for goods and services. From consumer
items in Addisu Gebeya and Shola to the shopping spree on Bole’s
posh areas and the entertainment offering of the capital, our
writers TESFALEM WALDYES, Special to Fortune, ISSAYAS MEKURIA an
A year from tomorrow, Ethiopia will
begin the countdown into a new millennium of its own. Time flies and
people seldom take the time to consider all that has happened over
the finishing year, or truly consider what changes they wish for in
the coming year. As with many of the companies advertising in the
Fortune and Ethiopia’s other papers as well as media outlets,
we, at the Fortune, wish you all a joyous and prosperous
Ethiopian New Year; the last year of the outgoing millennium.
Professor Joseph
E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, believes he has been
misunderstood for his criticisms of globalisation's impacts. There are many who
put him amongst the anti-globalisation pundits. He says instead, in this article
provided to Fortune by Project Syndicate, that he wants to see it work,
but bring change that is not imposed or through crisis. He argues that change
that is planned and managed will help the capitalist system survive much as John
Maynard Keynes's theories did immediately after the American Great Depression.
The EPRDF remains
unflinching in its defence of public land ownership. Though this may
reflect the preferences of many Ethiopians, it might be wise to
review some of the arguments for and against private land ownership;
particularly as many economists view this as the single biggest
obstacle to development in Ethiopia.
One might
mention many contributing factors for the mounting poverty in rural
Ethiopia today; but for me the primary problem is the limited amount
of arable land available per family as compared to the galloping
increase of the rural population.
The very
structure of the agricultural economy and its evolution aggravates
unemployment even when modern systems do not take away work from
unskilled labourers. The introduction of miracle seeds was meant to
change the agricultural economy, by increasing the farmers' incomes
without increasing the land available for cultivation, because among
other things the traditional seeds were to be replaced by seeds of
high-yielding varieties.
The other day, I was looking for something that I had put
away some time ago. Just to be thorough, I began going through some
of my old things, in case it happened to have gotten mixed-in by
accident. Of course, oohing and aahing at my
discoveries, I began going through more than what I had originally
intended, when I came across an old childhood radio.
I had not seen this radio in years, and it brought back
fond memories. I was excited to find something that made me so happy
as a child. Wanting to find out if it still worked, I went about the
house looking for an electric divider that would permit me to plug
it into the wall, as it would not plug in on its own.
The Ethiopian
New Year is just around the corner. Every time we fold up old
calendars to replace them with new ones, our heads churn with new
hopes while the dry season slowly slides into our wallets with new
expenses for holiday shopping, school fees and supplies and uniforms
for our children. This year we know it is going to be difficult to
shuttle our children to and from school because of the transport
problems following the new oil price hike. The concerned Ministry
has told us that an all-time record for school enrolments is to be
expected this coming year. I for one do not know what we can do to
mitigate the transport problem when schools are open and start
operating in full swing. But the camel seems to keep on walking.
