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The Metehara Sugar Factory, Ethiopia has netted more than 500 million birr from the sale of an estimated 930 thousand quintals of sugar and 7.6 million liters of ethanol in the last financial year.

The company has invested in developing its technical capacity and human resources towards enhancing its production levels in the last fiscal period noted Bizuneh Assefa, Manger of the plant.

Efforts undertaken by the factory include a range of upgrades including the refurbishment of older machinery he said.

Faffa Foods SC, Ethiopia introduced two new flavors of one of its latest products, Saba powdered soy milk at an even organized at the Sheraton Addis last week.

The event organized to promote the new product was attended by representatives from American innovator of Soy products, food ingredients and other nutritional products, Solae. The representatives were able to give a presentation on the various products offered by the company.

Saba Soy milk is packaged in Ethiopia with the powdered milk imported from one of the Solae branches in Kenya according to Zeku Ebro, General Manager of Faffa Foods SC.

The international Chinese footwear giant Huajian has been granted additional land for industrial investment outside the Ethiopian Capital, Addis Ababa.

The company has already launched production activity in its industrial plant found in the Chinese Eastern Industry Zone in Oromia Regional State and has been granted the new plot by the city administration of Addis Ababa.

The company has been granted 320 hectares of land from the city according to Birhanu Sirago Head of Public Relations with the Leather Industry Development Institute.

A construction exhibition opened in Addis Ababa yesterday with record levels of participation. Forty five domestic and international companies are participating in the exhibition. Most of the companies represented at the exhibition are from Turkey while nine are domestic and the rest are from Europe and Asia.

The construction exhibition has more nine more exhibitors than last year, including three more local firms according to the organizers of the four day event.

Turkish companies are dominating the Expo due to tax incentives offered by the Turkish government to promote the quality and competitiveness of Turkish goods and services according to Mert Gul, Event Director for Turkish International Fair Organizer, Expotim.

UK consultants, Adam Smith International Ltd is to study Ethiopia’s potential to raise revenue from tax under contract to the Ethiopian Revenues and Custom’s Authority. The Consultant will conduct the study for 10.7 million birr according to the contract signed between the two parties last week.

ERCA’s interest to engage a company to evaluate the potential tax revenue in the current economy initially attracted 16 companies. The  final shortlist consisted of six companies: included McKinsey & Co, KPMG of Netherlands, DFC &VNG partners, the local office of Ernst & Young, the India office of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd as well as Adam Smith.

Three companies, Deloite, Mckinsey and Adam Smith passed the technical evaluations and Adam Smith was awarded the contract because its 10.7 million birr proposal was significantly lower than the 26.5 million birr offered by Deloite and the 38 million birr offered by Mckinsey.

Ethiopian Airlines announced that it has postponed the launch of flight to Sao Paulo in Brazil because of an inconvenient time slot given the airlines. The airline announced that it will expects to launch flights to Sao Paulo in March instead of the originally intended December.

Ethiopian had anticipated launching thrice weekly flight to the Brazilian city through its hub in Lome, Togo.

The slot allotted to the airline by the airport administration authority of Sao Paulo is inconvenient and requires some additional discussion with Brazilian authorities said Tewolde Gebremariam, Chief Executive of the Airline.

The Ethiopian Embassy in India has announced that it is to launch a Cultural and Tourism Center to introduce African culture to Indians in November 2012. It is expected that center is to be the first of its kind in India.

The center is to be an indispensable element to promoting African values and Ethiopian culture in particular according to Metasebia Tadesse, Counselor for Political, Public Relations, Public Diplomacy.

The cultural center built to promote Ethiopian culture will also be used to organize various African get together including for scholars and diplomatic delegates congregating for various purposes he said.

Ethiopia is one the African countries designated as emerging in the telecom sector according to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

The number of cellular phone subscribers in Ethiopia has reached 18 million in Ethiopia which exhibits the increasing progress of ICT in the country according to Dr. Debretsion Gebremichael, Minister of Communication and Information Technology.

Dr. Debretsion made these remarks at the opening of the Africa Regional Bureau of International Telecommunications Union, Performance Evaluation Meeting 2011 held in Addis Ababa last week.

The Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office is finalizing preparations to conduct the re-registration of trademarks. The re-registration will be conducted on the basis of the proclamation for the registration of trademarks according to Berhanu Adelo, Director General for the EIPO.

There are currently 14 thousand registered trademarks in Ethiopia with 7500 being international trademarks said Berhanu.

In related news Ethiopia has managed to trademark its fine coffee brands ‘Harar’, ‘Yirgachefee’ and ‘Sidama’ internationally he noted.

The revenue Ethiopia earns from the mining sector has grown notably in the last two years according to the Ministry of Mines.
Mining investment projects in Ethiopia were valued at 13 billion birr in 2010 but this sum has increased by 1.1 billion birr to reach 14.1 billion birr according to Bacha Faji, Ministry of Public Relations and Director of Communication.

The ministry has also licensed 56 more investment projects in the last two years with most of the licenses issued in the petroleum exploration and mineral exploration sectors he noted.

Ethiopia has been able to secure 162 million US dollars from petroleum exploration licenses, royalty tax, signing bonus and building payments in the previous fiscal year.