Ethiopia Will Replace Imported Metallic Products with Local Ones

The Metal Engineering Industry Development Institute said Ethiopia would pursue a policy of replacing metallic products which it imports with local products in the next five years.

The Institute Director General, GetahunTadele made the statement while presenting its 1st quarter performance report and five year strategic plan.

Metallic products constitute the bulk of the products in which the country imports from abroad.

For instance, he said, metal products in which the country imports from abroad constitute 30-40 per cent of Ethiopia's total import products. This is estimated to be 33 billion Birr in terms of money.

So, he said, the country will replace the metallic products it imports with local ones in the next five years.

VISA certifies CBE


The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) two weeks ago linked its core banking system to the VISA Card system. Now international VISA card holders can go to the Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) of CBE and withdraw cash in birr. A senior official at CBE told The Reporter that the banks planned to also link its system with Master Card. CBE has installed 46 ATMs at different branches of the bank and business centers in Addis Ababa.

CBE awarded the card-based payment system turnkey solutions (CBPS) project to a Moroccan company, M2M, in March 2009. The project includes the supply, implementation and support of 50 ATMs and 250 Point of Sales (PoS), personalization system, switch and electronic fund transfer solutions, server platform and data base. According to the contractual document the project includes a three-year technical support. M2M, with its local representative and subcontractor, MOTI Engineering Plc, commenced work on the project in April 2009. The companies conducted adequacy study and started delivering the ATMs last June. The total cost of the project is about 77 million birr.

A senior official of CBE told The Reporter that the companies have installed 46 of the 50 ATMs. The official said the remaining 4 are being installed. The 46 ATMs are operational with domestic card as well as VISA Card. The bank official said the VISA Card certification process was finalized two weeks ago, adding that the testing was successful.

The ATMs are installed at the bank’s branch offices in Addis Ababa, business centers, at the Hilton Hotel, the Ghion and Ethiopia hotels. CBE has recruited merchants who will run the POS. The POS were expected to be operational by December. CBE was the first bank to introduce ATMs in 2003. The bank launched the service with eight ATMs which were not compliant with VISA card. Dashen Bank introduced VISA card compliance ATMS in 2006.

Visa is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, banks and governments in more than 200 countries and territories, enabling them to use digital currency instead of cash and checks.

In related news, CBE is to launch mobile top-up services-recharging prepaid mobile accounts by deducting money from customer’s account at CBE and paying to the newly restructured Ethio Telecom and settling utility bills through mobile phones or ATMs. CBE is already testing the mobile top-up services. Employees of the bank are recharging their mobile accounts without buying scratch cards. The system enables customers to pay electric and water bills. However, the bank needs to make agreements with the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation and Water and Sanitation Services Authority and interface the systems.

Ring Road Cleaning Commences

[b]Addis Abeba City Solid Waste Disposal Agency awards two-yearcleaning contract for eight million Birr[/b]


The Addis Abeba City Solid Waste Management Agency has awarded the cleaning service of the 33.5km long Ring Road to Asmeret Kebede Cleaning Services Plc for close to eight million Birr.

The company, which presented the winning bid, signed the contract in November 2010, and started its cleaning service fully on Thursday, December 16, 2010, following a trial period.

Although Seven companies initially submitted proposals, only five made it past the technical and financial evaluation.

The contract, which is for two and a half years, has the option of extension based on the company’s performance, according to Ermias Seyoum, deputy manager and head of procurement at the agency.

“The company is to be paid on its monthly performance which will be evaluated by supervisors,” he told Fortune.
Established by a member of the Ethiopian Diaspora, Asmeret Kebede Cleaning started out by designing and manufacturing dust bins and trash container nets.

The company will clean solid waste from the road every 24 hours and wash the road once a month, at night, according to the contract.
For the first six months, the company is to conduct the washing using manual labour, but must import a machine for the purpose after that, the contract stipulates. (why?)
The company has agreed to hire up to 300 employees for the cleaning, according to Ermias.

The Solid Waste Management Agency took over the responsibility of cleaning the Ring Road from the Addis Abeba City Roads Authority (AACRA), in June 2010. Under its supervision, there are 521 small and micro enterprises (SMEs) that collect trash in the city door-to-door, and 1o private cleaning companies that collect trash from other private companies and government institutions.

Ethiopia to import Philipino teachers

The Ethiopian government is set to import technology and vocational teachers from the Philippines to meet the growing demand for instructors in its polytechnic institutions, Capital has learnt.

Around 150 teachers will be brought from the Philippines in the next few months. A government official has already traveled to the Asian country to interview the teachers.
The Ministry of Education has regularly brought in teachers from India to fill the vacant teaching positions in various higher learning institutions. This has not occurred in Technical and Vocational Education however.

But now, the Federal Ministry of Education is set to hire teachers from the Philippines in order to train students in vocational and technical education throughout the country.

Though the ministry is saying the teachers will arrive shortly, it has declined to state to which regional states’ polytechnic institutes the teachers will be assigned to and when exactly they will reach Ethiopia.

The importing of technology teachers is congruent with the government’s educational policy of a 70/30 ratio of science to social work majors.
The Addis Ababa city government of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Agency has already prepared four institutions to accommodate the teachers.

Among the six TVET institutions in the city, Entoto, Misrak, Nifas Silk, General Wingate and Tegbare-Ed are the beneficiaries of the Philipino teachers. All instructors are expected to have extensive knowledge of technology.

“We don’t have a say as to who will come to us,” said Awel Kedir deputy director of the Addis Ababa TVET agency, “but we know they are coming and we hope they arrive here in the next few months,” he said adding that they will be dispersed across various institutions.

Currently, there are 95 TVET colleges in the country, out of which 11 are government owned.

Ethiopia Gets $224.3 Million Funding for Power Lines

Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Ethiopia secured $224.3 million from the African Development Bank to fund the construction of four electricity transmission lines to improve its own power supply and help development in neighboring countries, the lender said.

Additional transmission capacity is “critical and timely” for Ethiopia’s industrial development, said Lamin Barrow, the AFDB’s resident representative, by phone today from the capital, Addis Ababa. The lines will connect areas in the north, east and south-west of the country, and help expedite plans to export power to Sudan and Kenya, he said.

Under a five-year plan, Ethiopia, which suffers from intermittent blackouts, plans to quadruple power generation to at least 8,000 megawatts and expand electricity coverage to 75 percent of the population from 41 percent now. A lack of transmission lines is hindering attempts to export power, the state-owned Ethiopian Electric Power Corp. said on Dec. 8.

The Tunis-based African Development Bank will lend Ethiopia 61 percent of the funds and donate the rest, Barrow said.

The project, which will see 948 kilometers (589 miles) of 230-volt cables laid, is scheduled to finish in Aug. 2013, Barrow said. Eight new sub-stations will be built and another 11 upgraded under the plan, he said.

December 26 Posted by: suleyman | Today, 01:03 |


- Utility billing next in line
By Asrat Seyoum

The National bank of Ethiopia’s (NBE) long-awaited project that set out to implement and support a nation-wide integrated payment processing system comprising an automated payment transfer mechanism, out of which Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and Automatic Clearing House (ACH) are prime components, has successfully moved to its implementation stages.

Supported by the World Bank’s International Development Association, the financial sector capacity-building project, an envelop project, kicked-off in may 2009 with the aim of modernizing the national payment system in the small, yet growing, financial sector. Especially, projects which are meant to improve the payment system among the financial institutions and regulatory role of the banks were given a head start and the two complementary systems, RTGS and ACH, are now getting ready to take effect. Though most of the new systems in the pipeline at NBE, with an exception of few, require core banking applications from the side of the commercial banks, the majority of banks at the moment had selected, purchased and installed their core banking solutions.

Alemayehu Kebede, change management and communications directorate director at the NBE, told The Reporter that it would not be too long before the two banking systems become live in the industry. RTGS is a mechanism that is in use in most developed financial systems and its main purpose is to settle payments of large-value transactions among the financial institutions, in real time and on the basis of transactions, on the account held at the national bank. The system is specifically designed to handle payment settlements on a transaction-by-transaction basis without any time lag. Though RTGS does not necessarily require the core banking application as it is not expected to do any clearing on payment arrays, its is hailed for minimizing the risk in payments involving large transactions.

According to Alemayehu, the real-time nature of the settlement also takes into consideration the appropriate value of money, since time lag in payment settlement taxes away the value of money in the form of interest that would have been earned on the money.

On the other hand, ACH, which requires core banking applications in the banks to function, provides for transactions with low value and more of a retail nature that are exchanged among institutions to be cleared out automatically. This system is some sort of an electronic payment network which provide for clearing capabilities based on the payment orders exchanged among the institutions. A range of low-valued transactions among the banks would be netted and cleared by a central data-processing center avoiding physical payment instruments like checks to clear out payments, said Alemayehu. “With all of the above changes coming to effect, the banks will also be required to make their core banking applications ready to interface with the system.”

Furthermore, he noted that the automated system would also support utility billing mechanisms, which, however, takes time to work out with the providers. With the addition of the automatic switch system that would enable banks to use a limited number of Automated Teller Machines (ATM) and Point of Sales (PoS), the payment system in the industry would significantly change, Alemayehu added

Hundreds of brand new earth moving machines, including tractors, excavators, bulldozers, and dump trucks can be seen parked a few metres from a 10,000ht plot of land leased by Saudi Star Agricultural Development Plc in Abobo Town, located 35km from Gambella, on December 18, 2010. Registered with a capital of 500 million Br as an investment company in August 2009, Saudi Star, which is co-owned by Mohammed Al-Amoudi, plans to start cultivating rice by the Alwero Dam, which was constructed by the military during the time of the Derg for growing cotton on land that has lain idle for close to two decades, since the regime’s demise. - Addis Fortune

ROOM IN A CITY-
NICE ONE!!!

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IT REALLY HAS A POTENTIAL FOR SUCH HUGE PLAZA AND FOR ALL CULTURAL, TRADITIONAL POLITICAL AND SPORT EVENT. FOR DAY TO DAY PUBLIC ACTIVITIES LIKE CHILDREN PLAY GROUND, ADULTS LEISURE PLACE, YOUTHS SPORT ACTIVITIES PLACE, RESTAURANTS, PUBLIC DRINKING FOUNTAINS AND TOILETS/ SHOWER ROOMS FOR EXERCISERS, I THINK I HAS A POTENTIAL FOR FOR ADDIS TO SPEND A LEISURE TIME ON SUCH HISTORICAL PLACE.

PROGRESS REPORT ON HOPE UNIVERSITY ADDIS ABEBA



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Construction of Koga dam finalized




December 26
– The construction of the main dam for the koga irrigation and watershed management project has been fully completed, the Ministry of Water and Energy said.

Ministry Public Relations and Communication Directorate Director, Bizuneh Tolcha, told WIC today that the dam with 21 meters height and 1.73 km length has the capacity to hold 83.1 million m3 water.

He said the dam has already started storing water.

He further said some 78.4 per cent of implementation of the koga irrigation and watershed management project has been completed so far.

According to Bizuneh, the project is expected to be finalized by the end of this budget year.

He said more than 452 million birr was spent so far out of the 600 million birr required for the project.

Upon completion, the project would benefit 67,550 farmers, he indicated.