2merkato

The Ethiopian Airlines is going to be fully integrated into Star Alliance, the largest airline alliance, in October. The process took over a year and 6.9 million dollars which has not been paid in full yet.

The airlines had to fulfil 83 criteria, including IT compliance, to earn full membership of the alliance.
Ethiopian is the third African airline to join the Star Alliance after South African Air (SAA) and Egypt Air.

Ethiopian uses SABER booking system, which needed to be connected with the central system of the Star Alliance headquarters, and with those of the 29 member carriers.

The Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) approved last Tuesday a 1.52 billion birr loan to Habesha Cement.

The company had sought from the bank 70 percent of the fund it need for setting up a cement factory in the country.

The bank is currently drafting the loan agreement and it is expected that the parties will sign the deal next week.

The annual production capacity of Habesha’s first factory is projected to be 1.4 million tonnes of cement a year, according to Mesfin Abi, CEO of the company.

Areas of interest include real estate, mining, manufacturing, healthcare and agro-industry.

Ethiopians living in the United States are going to discuss the existing investment opportunities in Ethiopia at a conference to be held in Washington DC.

The conference, under the theme "Collaborative Investing by the Diaspora", is scheduled to take place on Saturday October 8 at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel.  

The conference is a half a day U.S. private-sector-led initiative. The organisers expect about 300 people to attend the meeting.

The Ethiopian Airlines said it had changed its plan to purchase Bombardier aircraft.

It was reported last week that the airlines was holding talks with representatives of Bombardier, the Canadian airframer, for the purchase of additional Q400 aircraft which are known for less emission and noise.

Tewolde Gebremariam, CEO of Ethiopian said that after a series of managerial meetings the airlines had decided to conduct a market study to determine what type of aircraft it needs to buy and how many.