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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.

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.

Emirates Airlines is committed to a daily cargo flight from Dubai to Ethiopia increasing its potential freight capacity to 15 tons per flight according to the airline management.

Ethiopia has a growing industrial sector which is expected to grow significantly and hence increasing the local market for the cargo services offered by the airline Abdalla Al Zamani, Emirates Manager to Ethiopia.   

Emirates counts flights to Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Shangahi amongst the 120 international destinations. These destinations are important to Ethiopian and Chinese business people for import and investment purposes to facilitate trade, strengthen business ties and to encourage engagement and tourism said Al Zamani.

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.

Ethiopian Airlines, Ethiopia’s flag carrier, is to launch flights to Sao Paulo in Brazil as of this summer.

The airline is contemplating the direct flight to Brazil due to the emergence of the Latin American country as one of the prominent members of the world economic scene.

Ethiopian expects a significant number of travelers to Brazil including business travels and those traveling to the various tourist destinations in Brazil.

Australian Miner, Foreskew, has requested an iron exploration license to prospect for iron in Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia.

The firm is particularly interested in the area between Bale and Harrarghie which is known for oil seepage which is an indication of the presence of uranium and gemstones.

It remains unclear if the Ministry of Mines has began processing applications for exploration licenses for the ban put in place last November according to sources.

Ethiopian Airlines, Ethiopia’s flag carrier, is planning to establish a new carrier in Central African according to a Senior Executive.

The management aims to create a new African airline to provide service to Central and Southern Africa said the official.

Ethiopian expects to attract investors such as South Africa Airways and Egypt Air in the proposed project although the detail work plans are still in development noted the official.