Power Break: Obviously
quite comfortable in his sunglasses, Mehret Debebe, Ethiopian
Electric Power Corporation’s General Manager, enjoys the attention
of his East African counterparts, Bushra Abdalla Gadalla (on the
left), Director of General Directorate of Financial Affairs and
Supplies at Sudan’s National Electricity Corporation, and Eng.
Julius M. Riungu, Power Engineering Consultant at Kenya’s Ministry
of Energy. The three men were taking part in meetings to discuss
Ethiopia’s potential supply of electricity to its neighbours.
Chinese Firms
Battle Turkish Company over Derba-MIDROC
Two Chinese
companies are up against a Turkish heavyweight in the installation
of cement plants, bidding on the construction of what will be the
largest cement factory in Ethiopia, to be built by Derba-MIDROC
Cement Plc.
One of the five
cement projects currently in the pipeline in the Oromia Regional
State, registered with a capital of 2.4 billion Br, the plant will
be erected on a 123.42ht plot located not far from the town of
Chancho, 40Km north of Addis Abeba.
Police from the
Ethiopian Customs Authority (ECA) took two Customs Tariff Officers
who worked at its La Gare station into custody on September 21,
2006. They are suspected of falsely reducing customs tariff
estimation for vehicles entering the country.
Yeruksew Girma
and her colleague Kefelegn Kassahun are accused of estimating duty
lower than the correct tariff classification by logging older
manufacturing dates for the vehicles in question. The police did not
disclose the owners of the vehicles or the number of vehicles
involved in the case
The Mugher
Cement Enterprise, the largest cement producer in the country, is
closing a 140 million dollar deal with the Chinese company, SINOMA
International, for an expansion project.
One of the
issues the Enterprise and SINOMA International had been negotiating
and finally agreed on is that SINOMA will be accepting 30pc of the
total budget in local currency to be paid by the Enterprise. But the
source for the rest of financing, to be made in foreign currency,
has yet to be determined.
An Indian
Company, Overseas Infrastructure Alliance Pvt. Ltd (OIA) signed a
contract with the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo) to
supply electrical equipment worth 572 million Br.
According to the
contract that was signed on Thursday September 22, 2006, OIA is to
provide equipment to be used for the installation of 132kv
transmission and distribution lines as well as equipment to be used
in the construction of sub-stations in the next six months.
The Development
Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) foreclosed on an 11 million Br debt owed by
ETAB Syringe Manufacturing Plc, the only syringe manufacturing
company in Ethiopia.
Police and
representatives of the Bole District and Kebele accompanied members
of DBE’s Foreclosure Department to the factory to bar ETAB from
further operation on the morning of September 19, 2006. They came
across some resistance from the factory workers.
An official
from the Bank told Fortune that DBE engineers would do a
price estimation on the property within the next three to four weeks
after which it will put the property up for auction.
The Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) will hire 109 additional
employees in order to implement the goal of approving loans worth
2.5 billion Br of which 1.8 billion Br will be disbursed in the next
nine months.
The state-owned
DBE will be hiring loan officers, economists, accountants,
engineers, agricultural professionals and management professionals.
Loan officer hiring will begin by the end of this month.
Residents at
the CMC, a posh neighbourhood east of Addis Abeba, picked up a
battle last week that they hope will take them a long way before
their landlord, the federal Agency for the Administration of Rented
Houses (AARH), enforce a rent increase some of them describe as
“punitive” and characterizes the manner the state does its
governance business.
Several CMC
residents are of the opinion that the episode shows the ways
government agency decisions are unilaterally enforced on citizens.
Members of the
Afdera Salt Producing Association will increase their selling price
to distributors from 20 Br per quintal to a range of 38–42 Br per
quintal. The Association, which represents close to 200 of the 300
area salt traders, provides the central market with salt from Afdera
Lake, located in the Afar Regional State, 850kms to the east of
Addis Abeba.
The members
decided to increase the price as they found that their original
price did not cover their initial starting capital and that they
suffered a loss of around two birr per quintal in the marketplace.
East Africa Bottling S.C (EAB), which manufactures Coca-Cola
beverages in Ethiopia, is going to execute a 12 million dollar
expansion plan.
EAB, which also
manufactures Fanta, Sprite and Royal Mineral Water, is going to
implement the plan in its main factory compound located on Dejazmach
Balcha Aba Nefs Road, near the Addis Abeba Technology Faculty.
National Housing
Project Finds Alternative to Cement
The Ministry of
Works and Urban Development has decided to use the Gogoba
soil found in the Dire Dawa Provisional Administration, as an
alternative resource to cement.
The material
will be used to manufacture blocks that can be used in the
construction of 1,600 houses for the 10,000 residents of Dire Dawa,
whose homes were destroyed in the floods that hit the town in August
2006, as well as the building of another 1,650 condominiums in
accordance to the Ministry’s four year construction plan.
The Oromia
Investment Commission has started a campaign to review 2,000
projects in five woredas located around the Addis Abeba area.
This campaign,
which began September 20, is being carried out so to identify
problems faced by investors and to repossess lands where no effort
was made towards development.
PM
Redirects Coal Power Project to Fertilizer Production
Prime Minister
Meles Zenawi has taken the Yayu Coal Mine and Coal Fired Thermal
Power Plant Complex Project away from the Ethiopian Electric Power
Corporation (EEPCo), who worked on it for over a year, and
reassigned it to its former overseeing office, the Coal Phosphate
Fertilizer Complex Project (COFCOP).
The Prime
Minister decided on September 6, 2006 that COFCOP should immediately
take over the Yayu Project from EEPCo and merge it with the
fertilizer project that it has been overseeing since 2004. Sources
told Fortune that the decision was taken during a meeting that took
place at the Office of the Prime Minister.
Yamamoto Vows to
Promote Transparency in Ethiopian Politics
Donald
Yamamoto, an American senior diplomat with vast experience in
Africa, told the US Senate last week that he will promote an open
and transparent electoral process in Ethiopia.
Mr. Yamamoto
sees such a process to include full engagement with all opposition
parties in order to ensure “dynamic participation in political
decision-making, tolerance to dissent, an independent judiciary with
transparent and accountable judicial processes, the consistent
protection of human rights, and a free and responsible press.”
A new report by
the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) -
entitled "Economic Development in Africa - Doubling Aid: Making the
'Big Push' work" - was released on September 21, 2006 at the UN
Conference Center.
The report
recommends new aid distribution strategies for Africa to be done
multilaterally and by a UN fund independent of political
considerations.
Ministry Urges Gov. Agencies to Open
Investment Desk
The Ministry of
Trade and Industry urged seven governmental agencies and departments
to open an investment desk within their offices.
The request
came after a meeting chaired by Girma Birru, Trade and Industry
minister, that united several state organisations and government
agencies to endorse an “Investment follow-up and support manual”.
The Wegagen
Bank S.C. has given all its employees a bonus worth a month and a
half of salary to celebrate the Bank’s 2005-2006 annual performance,
which shows Wegagen making a profit higher then any other year since
its establishment.
Wegagen Bank
has made bonus payments to 1,100 employees working at its
headquarters and to all those working in its 32 branches in Addis
Abeba and across the country in the amount of 900,000 Br.
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.
New Film
Depicts Coup Attempt Against Military Regime
In early
October 2006, Abugida, a two hour-long Amharic movie, directed and
produced by renowned Ethiopian actor Mulualem Tadesse, will be
released at Alem Cinema.
Abugida is
based on events that took place in Ethiopia during and after the May
1989 coup attempt, when high ranking generals and senior officers
plotted to overthrow Mengistu Hailemariam.
The coup
d'etat, which was immediately thwarted, resulted in officers
involved in the plot being killed, others facing the same fate
following the verdict reached at a special military tribunal and
many more thrown in jail.
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.
