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Lawmakers are scheduled to vote next on 5 July 2011 on the proposed 39 percent increase in the budget for projects targeting the improvement of food security and infrastructure programs, an official of the Ministry of Finance said.

Mauritius leads Africa    

Ethiopia ranked 121st out of 125 countries on the fifth annual Global Innovation Index released by the INSEAD business school. European countries dominated the top 11 economies on the list, and more than half of them are in the northern regions of the continent.

The House of Peoples' Representatives yesterday authorised the National Payment System bill drafted by the Budgetary and Financial Affairs Standing Committee.

The bill was endorsed taking into consideration the significance of legal framework supporting the payment system in the country.

Earns $3 mln from export, plans cotton production on 30,000 ha   

Else Addis Industrial Development P.L.C, a textile factory, announced that it had started exporting textile products to different countries around the world.

The first time the company exported its textile products was in March. It exported textile products to the United States, Russia, Ukraine and the Far East countries, Dilek Durular, project coordinator of the company, said. 

Abu Thiyab Holdings Co, a Saudi company, announced that it was poised to inaugurate its water bottling plant in September 2011 in its factory in Ethiopia. The construction of the plant in Gelan, a 35 million birr investment on three hectares of land 35 km east of Addis Ababa, is almost finished.

Commercial Bank of Ethiopia signed an agreement for International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) to build a platform to deliver electronic banking services, as the bank intends to use new technology for the expansion of its business.

The expanded Messebo Cement Factory was inaugurated on Saturday, 25 June 2011. About 2.3 billion birr was spent on the expansion project.

ith the expansion project alone, the factory can produce 3,000 tonnes of cement a day and 1.3 million tonnes a year. Therefore the factory’s production capacity grows to 2.2 billion tonnes a year, according to Hatsey Berhe, general manager of Messebo Cement Factory.

Canaco Resources said this week that its shareholders had approved of the spin-out of Tigray Resources Inc. Part of the transaction will be the transfer of 4 million dollars and Canaco's 70 percent interest in the Harvest Mining PLC, which owns the Harvest VMS Project in Ethiopia, to Tigray. Sufficient funds will also be transfered for the recommended first phase drill program.

The Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority's (ERCA) Large Taxpayers and Western Addis Ababa branch offices are relocating this month from the headquarters building of the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association to the authority's former headquarters at Beklo Bet.

The Large Taxpayers and Western Addis Ababa branch offices of the ERCA have been occupying five floors of the Chamber's building.

ERCA's central server for the registration of daily sales coming from customers' cash register machines had been installed in the Chamber's building in front of the Mexico Square. The central cash register machine server will move to the authority's current headquarters at Megenagna, officials said.

South Korean President Lee Myung Bak is scheduled to visit Ethiopia, South Africa and Democratic Republic of Congo from July 2 through July 11. The president will visit Ethiopia on July 8.

He is expected to discuss ways to expand cooperation with Ethiopia and the other African countries over various areas like nuclear power, energy and raw materials, his office said in a statement today.