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Ethiopia and Vietnam discussed collaboration on Ethiopia’s accession to the World Trade Organization when Le Luong Minh made a visit to Ethiopia this week.

A team of technical experts from Ethiopia had previously visited Vietnam for advice on World Trade negotiations. The team also discussed ways to enhance trade in agriculture and textiles.

There are many potential areas for cooperation between the two countries noted Le Luong.

Ethiopia was selected to host the “Origin Africa’ textile exhibition because of its conducive investment and trade policy according to Rajeev Arora, Director of the African Cotton and Textile Industries Federation.

The exhibition will be held in Addis Ababa from April 25-28 2012.

Ethiopia should enhance the competitiveness of its textile and garments sector on the international market said Arora.

Ethiopian Airlines, Ethiopia’s flag carrier, has trained eight pilots to operate the 787 Dreamliner at the Boeing Flight Services campus at Gatwick, London. The airline is training additional batches of trainees to qualify for the Dreamliner at the same facility.

Ethiopian Airlines pilots are the first African pilots to qualify to fly the Dreamliner making this a milestone in the history of the airline said Capitan Desta Zeru, Senior Vice President of Flight Operations with Ethiopian.

Ethiopia invites those of the Diaspora to take advantage of the investment opportunities in the country according to Hailemariam Dessalegn, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Ethiopian government has created an investment friendly environment he noted at a discussion forum organized for the Diaspora.  

The country has allocated 3.6 million hectares of land to be made available for investment projects with just 500,000 hectares  leased by international investors.  Ethiopia has delegated an international company to study the slow investment activities with 40% of the land leased by members of the Diaspora idle.  

Guangdong Chuanhui Group, a Chinese company, is expecting final approval to take charge of 41,000m2 to construct a 58 Storey five star hotel in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa.

The building is expected to be one of the five tallest buildings in Africa.

GCG submitted a request for land for the project two years ago one of five proposals from domestic and international investors according to the city administration.

M2M Group, a Moroccan based information technology, has offered the lowest bid of 8 million US dollars for the supply of 420 Units of Automated Teller Machine and 37 Million birr for the supply of 4000 point of sales machines to the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia.                                              

The letter awarding the contract is yet to be issued by the bank and the bank declined to comment on the process until the vendor has officially been announced.

Some other competitors have lodged complaints with the bank alleging that the price quoted by M2M did not include VAT according to sources.

M2M denies any such allegations as baseless according to a senior manager with the company.

Ethiopia’s national Electronic Fund Transfers has seen interest from a dozen international information technology companies and their domestic partners.

The switch system for the national EFT is a technology that will allow customers to transact money from nearby ATMs with payment cards from any bank that is part of the system by centralizing the card payment system of all banks linked to the national payment system of the central bank explained Bizuneh Bekele, General Manager of EthSwitch SC.  

EthSwitch was established last year with an initial capital of 80 million birr equally contributed by all banks operating in Ethiopia. The board of the company is chaired by Berhanu Bekele, General Manager of United Bank.

The windfall tax Ethiopia collected from commercial banks after the devaluation of the birr last year is to be used to supplement the budget of the Ethiopian Roads Authority and the Ministry of Education.

The Ministry of Finance and Economic Development allocated 3 billion birr the ERA and 1 billion to the MoE. The bill allocating the supplementary budget was approved by the Council of Ministers and referred it the House of Peoples Representatives which referred it to the Budget and Financial Affairs Standing Committee.  

If the committee approves the supplemental budget ERA’s budget will increase to 20.5 billion which is 177% more than the 7.1 billion birr the authority was allocated in 2008-09.

Kajara Ceramics is set to begin construction on a factory building in Ethiopia. The factory will be built on a 38 hectare piece of land given to the company six months ago in Debre Berhan.

The Debre Berhan municipality furnished the company on the confidence it had in the company based on its profile and the recommendation of Genet Zewdie, Ethiopian Ambassador to India said Getaneh Zeke, Mayor of Debre Berhan.

Kajara ceramic is the largest manufacturer of ceramic and vitrified tiles in India with an annual production capacity of 33.70 million m2 manufactured by three plants all located in India according to the company website.

Eyob Girma Consulting and Architects secured the design for the 13 Storey building for Africa Insurance Company, Ethiopia. The consultants competed against four other finalists to win the bid to draw up the plans and 50,000 birr.

The Insurance company expects to invite bids for the construction of the building in the next Ethiopian fiscal year which will begin in July according to Kiros Jiranie, CEO of Africa Insurance.

Negotiations will be launched with the architects in the coming weeks for a fully detailed proposal and consultancy of the building project he said. The Insurance company has finalized negotiations for a 600 m2  piece of land from the administration of Addis Ababa.