2merkato

Ethiopian Airlines entered into a code share agreement last week with Asiana Airlines, the award winning South Korean airline, to enhance the growing cooperation with Star Alliance member carriers.

The Ethiopian Airlines said that the partnership between Ethiopian and Asiana would provide passengers of both airlines with greater flight options and better connections between Africa and Asia.

A delegation of about 30 Indian companies led by Karuturi, the world's largest flower producer, last week expressed interest in investing in the agro business sector in Ethiopia.

Indian companies have so far invested about 5.5 billion dollars and Karuturi said that the newly coming Indian investors would significantly push up the figure.

Karuturi is currently engaged in farming flower, palm oil, rice and maize on 100,000 hectares of land in the Gambella Regional State and Bako in the Eastern Wollega Zone of Oromia Region.

Eyesuswork Zafu, veteran insurer, said last week that he would retire within two months from his position as the CEO of United Insurance. He has been the CEO of the insurance company for the last 17 years.

Eyesuswork, who is also the president of the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Associations, has been considering retirement from the insurance company for the last three years.

He said that although he would retire soon, he would continue to serve the company in the capacity of a councillor and an advisor. “As personal connections still matter in the insurance industry, I will be there to assist the company’s business.”

The Ethiopian Minerals Development S.C (EMD) announced that it had earned 341.64 million birr from the sale of minerals at local and international markets last fiscal year, up by 177 percent from the previous fiscal year's revenue.

About 98 percent of the revenue was obtained from the sale of tantalum while the balance was generated from the sale of industrial minerals and services, Girmachew Asfaw, senior planner of the company, said.

EMD owns and manages the Kenticha Tantalum mine and it produces and exports tantalum concentrate from the Kenticha mine.  

Stratex International, the AIM-listed gold miner, reported that it had seen promising results from its current drilling programme at the Megenta hot spring epithermal gold prospect, in the Afar region of Ethiopia.

The company said that it had intersected a broad near-surface zone of 43.55 m grading at 0.67 g/t gold at Hole MG-DD-10 and promising grab samples have also been collected from the Akehil prospect about 9 km away from Megenta.

The Ministry of Mines announced Tuesday that it had secured more than 509 million dollars from the mining sector during in the last fiscal year.

The amount was secured from gold, tantalum and gemstone producing companies and traditional miners, Sinknesh Ejjigu, Minister of Mines, said.

It was reported in July that the Ministry of Mines had collected 104 million birr in royalty fees 98 million birr of which was paid by MIDROC Gold.

Allana Potash Corp. announced that it had awarded an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment Study (ESIA) on its Ethiopia potash project to Environmental Resources Management (ERM).

The ESIA is scheduled to be completed around August 2012 and will form an integral part of the feasibility study the company is planning to initiate shortly.

ERM has offices in 40 countries around the world and Allana's project will be coordinated out of South Africa.

Having obtained capital injection from the Public Financial Institutions Supervising Agency (PFISA), the bank has decided to set aside budget for residential housing cooperatives to solve its capital shortage. The bank’s request for a 1.5 billion birr capital injection was submitted to the PFISA in 2008.

The latest report by the United States Department of Agriculture puts Ethiopia as the world’s 6th largest coffee producer for the 2010/2011 crop year.

According to the report, Ethiopia has produced about 4,400 bags of coffee (264,000 kg).

The top five coffee producing countries in the list are Brazil (54,500 bags), Vietnam (18,725 bags), Colombia (9,500 bags), Indonesia (9,325 bags) and India (5,100 bags).  

Ethiopia is followed by Honduras (4,000 bags), Peru (4,000 bags), Guatemala (3,910 bags) and Mexico (3,700bags).

Samples from the drill core are being processed for analysis.

Ethiopian Potash Corp announced yesterday that it had completed drilling five holes with total drilling through 1,000 metres to date of the planned 15,000 metre diamond drill programme on its 481km² Danakil Project, in Ethiopia.

The holes were drilled along the western edge of the Danakil and targeted the on strike continuation of the Musley potash deposit. All of the holes intersected the regional Danakil Potash Formation and potash mineralization.