Tsega Asamere, president of the Total Ethiopian Fuel Truck Owners
Association, marched on the streets of Addis Abeba on Thursday,
September 14, with his trademark pipe. He was joined by close to 450
protestors that began their march at Meskel Square and ended up at
the Prime Ministers Office, to lodge their complaints against the
recently introduced directive on the importation of fuel trucks,
which they say violates not only individual rights but also paves
the way to a monopoly. It was the first public protest to be held
after Prime Minister Meles Zenawi - who was outside of the country
attending the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Havana, Cuba -
suspended public gatherings in the aftermath of the May 2005
national elections.
Residents and
leaders of the CMC Residents' Association will be meeting this week
to protest recent rent increases by the federal Agency for the
Administration of Rented Houses (AARH).
The increase is
an average of 125pc from today’s 20 Br per square meter. Its
announcement on Thursday, September 14, brought "shock and awe"
among residents of Addis Abeba's upscale neighbourhood.
The residents
will have to sign a new rental agreement before October 10, 2006, or
be prepared to vacate the houses if they do not comply with the new
price increase, according to notices they were served last week.
EEPCo to Open
Negotiations with Sudan, Kenya Utilities
Following the
agreement that Ethiopia made with Kenya and Sudan on creating a
power system interconnection, the three countries will hold
negotiations this week on the project implementation and the power
purchase agreement.
In preparation
for the talks that will take place between the three countries on
Tuesday, September 19, 2006, five representatives from the National
Electricity Company of Sudan; the Kenyan Power Company (KPLC) and
Kenyan Generation (KENGEN) are expected to arrive in Addis Abeba
tomorrow. Engineers from the different project offices of the
Ethiopian Electrical Power Corporation (EEPCo) will be representing
Ethiopia in the negotiations.
The Privatization
and Public Enterprises Supervising Agency (PPESA) is forming a new
structure of three member audit committees for the 135 state
enterprises it administers. The audit committee members are largely
believed to be officials appointed from different governmental
organizations.
The agency said
that the new structure is needed to follow up the performance of the
enterprises.
Informed sources,
however, told Fortune the committee structure came into being
after complaints were expressed to the Agency from the enterprises’
own internal auditors of being intimidated by their management to
prepare an audit report to its liking. Though agency officials would
not confirm this, they did acknowledge that the federal auditor
general’s office had been consulted.
Abay Joins DBE’s Board, Bank to Release Yearly Results
Abay Tsehaye,
special advisor to the Prime minister on public Mobilization under
Ministerial Portfolio, was appointed member of the Board of
Directors of the oldest state owned bank, the Development Bank of
Ethiopia (DBE).
Also, for the
first time in its history, DBE will this coming week publicly
announce its annual performance of the past fiscal year of
2005-2006.
Abay Tsehaye, a
former minister of Federal Affairs and member of the ruling EPRDF
central committee, joined the seven other members of the Bank's
Board of Directors, who were appointed six months ago to lead the 98
year-old DBE; Abay joined the Board on August 3, 2006.
After two
Decades, Construction to Begin at Maritime
The Ethiopian
Maritime and Transit Services Enterprise signed an agreement with
DMC Construction Plc on September 14, 2006 to construct a 15-storey
multi-purpose building, at a cost of 150 million Br on Gambia
Street, opposite the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation's head
office in the Kirkos district.
The building will
be completely rented out and it will have a 360 degree revolving
restaurant on its highest floor - the second of its kind after the
Technostyle building, which is to be built next to the National
Hotel on Menelik II Avenue.
An Enterprise
official told Fortune that construction would start in the next two
weeks.
Police are
investigating three officers of the Federal Police and five
employees of the Addis Abeba Housing Development Agency in relation
to a theft of a million Birr worth of reinforcement bars that were
stolen from the Agency's metal dumping depot, located on Ras
Makonnen Avenue, near the La Gare railway station.
The 130,000tn of
reinforcement bars that were procured from the Ukraine by the Agency
in April and May 2005 were to be used in the condominium
construction project that the Agency is undertaking in Addis Abeba.
The Addis Abeba
Caretaker Administration has been reshuffling staff of boards that
oversee the five agencies under its structures, including the Lease
Board. The reshuffling became necessary as board members from the
previous Administration had to be replaced with members from the
Caretaker Administration.
The new Lease
Board, now chaired by Mayor Berhane Deressa, held its most recent
bi-weekly meeting on Friday September 1, 2006 and approved a
sweeping new directive for land allocation.
The Ethiopian
Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) is examining project proposals
from four European companies that include financing programs from
governments and international banks, a service usually handled by
ETC itself outside the bidding process.
The European
companies who have submitted their proposals after finding
financiers from different banks and governments are SIEMENS from
Germany, ERICCSON from Sweden, NOKIA from Finland and ALCATEL from
France.
Taking its cue
from the increasingly ambitious Gotera intersection project, the
Addis Abeba City Administration Roads Authority (AACRA) is planning
to double the width of Debre Zeit Road, from the Kaliti ring road up
to Meskel square, to 40m wide.
The project is an
addition to the rehabilitation of the intersection, popularly known
as Confusion Square, the 24ht space taking up the Gotera, Kaliti,
Kera and Ethio-Chinese Friendship roads intersection.
The issue
revolving around the overflow of old Birr notes in the three
National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) vaults has resulted in a decision to
transport and burn the old notes in the Wonji Shoa Sugar Factory,
located 125km east of Addis Abeba, this past week.
Due to the
deposit of over eight billion Birr worth of old notes in the NBE
vaults located on Sudan Street (between the National Theatre and the
Ministry of Health) in the new and previous NBE buildings as well as
another of the Bank's vault located in the same area near the
Artistic Printing Press, the Central Bank does not have any space to
place the new Birr notes that were printed by the French company,
Francois Charles Oberthur Fiduciarie (FCOF).
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.
For a regular
customer of Behil Restaurant, one of the three such businesses
adjacent to Ras Hotel on Gambia Street, the recent change on the
menu is obvious not on the cover or design of the book sized
brown-leather menu, but in the food prices inside.
Out of the
three pages of food, one can observe that previous prices on six
food types have been cancelled out with a red marker with new prices
written over them. However, the price increase has not affected the
cost of Tibs Firfir and Sega Firfir. The increase is
mostly seen in the menu’s eggs category and Italian specialities.
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.
By the end of
October 2006, PINGNET, a local company, in affiliation with Fun
With Phonics Inc in Hollywood, intends to bring Ethiopia a very
unique concept of community development through the teaching of
children via a 30 minute Fun With Phonics Program that will be
broadcast on ETV every weekend mornings, with reruns on weekdays.
Dana Dunn, Vice
President of Marketing and Sales of Pingnet Communications in
America, said that the program will combine education and
“edutainment”, which is a concept that makes the whole process of
learning more fun for children.
The making of
music videos or clips in Ethiopia has over the past years matured
into an industry that keeps on growing due to the demand for more
creativity.
Music videos in
Addis Abeba were traditionally considered to be dull, associated
with a singer standing in front of a beige curtain on one of the ETV
sound stages with a microphone in her hands as she lip-synched to a
song, often nervously and off beat.
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.
