2merkato

Adama Town is working to become the second most significant conference destination in Ethiopia after Addis Ababa according to the Culture and Tourism Office.

The Cultural and Tourism office is exerting efforts to foster the growth of conference tourism in the town said Dejenu Eshetu, Office Occupational Support Supervision Process Owner.

The town has several international standard hotels to provide adequate service for any type of conference he explained. The hotels provide services such as swimming pools, internet access, parking lots and meeting halls that make them desirable to tourists and event organizers said Dejenu.

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 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.

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.