Business

Ethiopia's annual expenditure of Birr 1.3 billion on production machinery, primarily imported, has sparked discussions on leveraging capital equipment lease finance to bolster the country's manufacturing sector. [...]

In a bold move designed to boost economic growth, Ethiopia took a major shift in its trade policy. The Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC) and the Ministry of Trade and Regional Integration jointly revealed that export, import, wholesale, and retail trade sectors would now be open to foreign companies. [...]

Here is the daily commodity trade data from Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) for items traded on 18 April 2024. [...]

Here is the daily commodity trade data from Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) for items traded on 17 April 2024. [...]

Addis Ababa Revenue Bureau announced a strong performance, collecting Birr 108 billion in revenue during the last nine months of the 2023/24 fiscal year. This achievement surpasses 98.5% of the city’s target of Birr 109.6 billion. [...]

There is a perk to living in a country that uses the Gregorian calendar, such as Ethiopia. We get to make a New Year’s resolution twice. The first one is in September, when we take stock of all that has transpired throughout the year and hope to do better. But that may never pan out. Maybe we are too caught up in the complexities of life and career to make it work. No problem. We try again in the Gregorian New Year. Of course, the problem with such resolutions is that they usually fail. There is, first of all, no reason that something we have been unable to get done this year can be accomplished beginning on the first day of the next. Nothing really changes between December 31 and January 1. Calendars are merely numbering methods created by humans based on the passing of the seasons and then perfected with later scientific knowledge of the rotation of the earth around the sun. It is all in our heads that a new year is an optimal time for a resolution. All that really happened was that gravity created a curvature in space-time to loop our planet around the star closest to [...]

The US government has terminated Ethiopia’s involvement in the African Growth & Opportunity Act (AGOA), citing “gross violations of internationally recognised human rights.” Signed into US law in 2000, AGOA permitted the duty-free entry of African produced goods. Ethiopia has been privileged to export close to 6,500 items to the US market, with an annual value of over half a billion dollars. Ethiopia is one of three sub-Sahara African countries to lose the privilege, together with Mali and Guinea. “I intend to terminate the designation of Ethiopia, Guinea, and Mali as beneficiary sub-Saharan African countries under the AGOA as of January 1, 2022,” says a letter President Joe Biden wrote to Congress today. “I’ll continue to assess whether the Governments of Ethiopia, Guinea, and Mali are making continual progress toward meeting the AGOA eligibility requirements.” [...]

City authorities have shut down a commercial centre in the country’s largest marketplace over allegations the share company that owns the building has not renewed its license. It is a decision that puts hundreds of tenants in the crossfire. Officials from the Wereda 8 Trade Bureau of the Addis Ketema District sealed the building off on September 15, 2021, alleging that the company holds an expired trade license. The company’s name is not even in the bureau’s registration system, according to Hiwot Gugsa, head of the trade bureau. Property of Edget Be-Andinet S.C., the three-storey building, was constructed in Mercato a decade ago at the cost of 40 million Br. It accommodated over 500 stores and shops, 30 offices, a cafe, a Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), and a parking lot. Sahilu Habtemariam, the chairperson of the share company, blames the District’s Trade Bureau for not cooperating while his office was trying to renew the trade license. “They’ve shut us down without a court warrant,” Sahilu told Fortune. “It’s illegal.” There was a court dispute between the share company and district officials, where the latter accused the company of falsifying the details of its paid-up capital. Officials had also closed five shops in the building [...]

Investing 3.8 million dollars in food fortification would help Ethiopia to save losses of over half a billion dollars spent on averting vitamin deficiencies, according to a new study by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Swiss-based foundation. The cost-benefit analysis report indicated that Ethiopia can upgrade its economy and bring health transformation if the government focuses on food fortification as its mandatory programme to prevent malnutrition. A dollar spent by the government, industries or consumers to fortify flour with critical nutrients could return 13 dollars in economic benefit, the report added. [...]

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has launched a four million euro project aimed at improving the wellbeing of households living along the Ethio-Kenyan border. The project, which is part of a series of initiatives being undertaken with financial support from the German government, also involves a pilot cash programme that will provide financial assistance to 1,600 households on either side of the border engaged in trade activities. Earlier this month, Ethiopian and Kenyan officials signed a protocol agreement to establish a legal framework for the formalisation of small-scale cross-border trade. Last year, Kenya’s exports to Ethiopia were valued at 71.5 million dollars, while goods going the other way registered less than 10 million dollars in revenues. [...]