2merkato

Four apparel and textile producers in Ethiopia are to wrap a 10 million US dollar deal with a group of US buyers in the next few weeks according to a senior representative of USAID Compete.

The Ethiopian textile companies involved in the deal are AYKA Addis, Addis Garment, Maa Garment and Kombolcha Textile and Calvin Kline is expected to be one of the US companies involved.

USAID Compete, is a USAID initiative which organizes Origin Africa, a yearly textile and apparel trade show in Africa. The Origin Africa event, which took place in Ethiopia for the first time this year, so 60 exhibitors representing many from the Ethiopian textile sector and about 26 buyers from the US and some from Europe.

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.

Holland Car plc, first automobile assembler in Ethiopia, has reached a Joint venture agreement with a transport company based in the Democratic Republic Congo, TRC-City to assemble Ahadu Bus and Abay Executive.

Holland Car owns 30% of the Joint Venture of the new assembly plant to be constructed in Kinshasa with the other 70% shared equally between the founding partners of TRC said Engineer Tadesse Tessema General Manager of the company.

Holland expects to show case the first Ahadu Bus assembled in the DRC in the coming four months according to sources.

Ethiopia earned 193.5 million US dollars from the export of manufactured products in the last nine months according to the Ministry of Industry.

The revenue earned exceeded the sum earned in the same period last year by 55.9 million US dollars or 40.7%.

The revenue was earned from the export of leather and leather products, agro-processing, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, textile and garment said Mekonnen Manazewal, State Minister of Industry in a presentation of the ministry’s nine month performance report to the House of Peoples’ Representatives.

Representatives from Ethiopia’s metal industry discussed the challenges facing the sector at meeting held last week.

Challenges include price increases, power cuts, taxes, the supply of scrap metal, capital shortages and the monopoly of the Ethiopian Shipping and Logistic Enterprise had the Ethiopian Association of Basic Metals and Engineering Industries to call for a public-private dialogue forum to support the sector.

The competitive advantage of domestic industries is adversely affected by the 5% import duty imposed on scrap metal exports while the finished product is imported duty free according to participants at the meeting suggesting the lift of import duty or develop a duty drawback scheme for domestic industry.