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Mesfin Industrial Engineering launched Saturday an assembly plant for Addis Car in partnership with Geely International Corp, a Chinese manufacturer. Addis Cars will assemble Geely cars powered by 1.3cc engines and equipped with double airbags and an anti-breaking system.

Mesfin has been assembling trucks and this is the first time for it to assemble automobiles. With the machinery the company imported for 10 million birr, it is capable of assembling five Geely automobiles at a time and over 800 a year.

Mesfin Industrial had imported 34 completely built units of Geely cars to test its appeal to middleclass customers at the end of 2010. The cars were sold at 285,000 birr each, which encouraged Mesfin Industrial to install the assembly plant, according to Yusuf, manager of sales and promotion at Mesfin Industrial.

Mesfin also has the sole distribution rights in Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan where Geely is not licensed to distribute. The company has been the exclusive importer and distributor of Geely cars in Ethiopia since August 2010.

By February 2011, 13 vehicle and tractor assembly companies were licensed and started operation. Some of companies are owned by foreigners, according to the Ethiopian Investment Agency.

Source: Fortune

Ethiopia earned over 8.2 million dollars from the export of garments and textile products this year, the Textile Industry Development Institute announced.

Compared with the income earned last year, this year’s earning has increased by 164.5 percent. The institute said in a press statement over the weekend that the amount of revenue the country earned in May this year exceeded that of the same period last year by 5.1 million dollars.

By May 2009, the country had earned 3.1 million dollars from the export of textile products for the 2008/09 fiscal year. Garments, textiles, yarn and fabric products earned about 59.8 percent, 19.8 percent, 19.3 percent and 1.4 percent respectively.

Those which earned the highest income in the textile and garment industry include Ayka Addis Textile & Investment, MAA Garment Factory, Kombolcha Textile and Adama Yarn Factory. Value-added apparel accounted for 49.3 percent among the exported items of the general textile products this year.  

Source: Fortune, ENA   

The Ethiopian Airlines announced that it would restart flights to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, today after they were temporarily suspended as a result of ash cloud from a volcanic eruption in Eritrea.

The ash cloud is expected to clear soon, allowing flights to destinations in eastern and northern Ethiopia to reopen, Ethiopian Airlines, sub-Saharan Africa's second-biggest carrier by passenger numbers, revealed in a statement.

The volcanic eruption which caused the temporary suspension of flights to destinations in northern Ethiopia occurred early Monday morning at Dubbi, 350 km north of Asmara, the capital of Eritrea.

Source: Bloomberg

Ethiopia to be part of the free trade zone

African trade officials met this week in Johannesburg to launch negotiations for a free trade area (FTA) which would embrace more than 26 countries, and about a trillion dollars of economic output.

The proposed deal would unite three existing trade blocs in central, eastern and southern Africa. It is believed that the free trade area will do away with most trade barriers between participating countries. African leaders said that the Free Trade Area (FTA) would be practical within three years.

Two of the blocs, the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the East African Community (EAC), have already been enjoying tariff- and quota-free trade.

In the mean time, the third bloc, the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), only has levies on 15 percent of goods and should be removing those by January.

When the negotiations are concluded, the enlarged FTA would include Ethiopia, Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, DRC, Egypt, Eritrea, Kenya, Lesotho, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Commerce within Africa is limited with not more than 10 percent of the continent's trade being conducted between African countries, while the balance goes overseas.
After its formation is complete, the free trade area will be hopefully open to regions throughout the whole continent, Diouf of the African Agency for Trade and Development said.

Source: Christian Science Monitor, Reuters

Hewlett Packard (HP) launched this week a Toner Cartridge Authentication (TCA) program to help customers confirm the purchase of original HP toner cartridges.

The new technology works on select HP LaserJet printers such as HP Colour LaserJet Pro CP5225 Series, HP LaserJet Pro M1530 MFP Series, HP LaserJet Pro P1100 Series, HP LaserJet Pro P1560 Series and HP LaserJet Pro P1600 Series.

The HP – TCA is free software that validates whether the installed cartridge is an original HP LaserJet toner cartridge or an alternative supply, such as a remanufactured, refilled, cloned or counterfeit cartridge.

When the cartridge is not a genuine HP cartridge, the TCA will present users with additional information to address potential counterfeiting.  If a user receives a notification when they believe they have purchased an Original HP cartridge, they will be directed to HP’s Anti-counterfeit website to report the potential counterfeit cartridge.

The new product is available to customers all over Africa who can download the HP TCA Software and apply it on any HP LaserJet printer that supports the digital authentication

Over the last four years, HP has assisted in the seizure of nearly nine million pieces of fake printing supplies products and components in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Source: HP press release

The government of Ethiopia has reached an agreement with the Export-Import Bank of India (Exim) for a 91 million dollar loan to fund exports and consultancy services for the development of the country's sugar industry.

The loan went in to effect as of 21 May 2011 and the agreement was executed as of February 18, a statement from the Reserve Bank revealed.

The agreement concluded on 18 February 2011 is for funding eligible goods and services, including consultancy services, machinery and equipment from India for the purpose of financing the development of the sugar industry in Ethiopia.

About 75 percent of the goods and services, including consultancy services, from the credit provided under the agreement, have to be sourced from India according to the press release.

Source: Economic Times

Wednesday, 15 June 2011

Ethiopian Airlines said that it started again flights to neighbouring Djibouti which had been temporarily suspended because of ash cloud from a volcanic eruption in Eritrea. The ash cloud has cleared. 

Flights to some cities in northern Ethiopia like Mekele, Gonder, Axum and Bahir Dar, and Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, remain suspended, the airlines said today.
The volcanic eruption which caused the temporary suspension of flights to destinations in northern Ethiopia occurred early Monday morning at Dubbi, 350 km north of Asmara, the capital of Eritrea.

Ethiopian Airlines had to cancel flights as reported here due to the volcanic ash.

Source: Bloomberg

Wednesday, 15 June 2011

Culture and Tourism Bureau of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's State said it had collected over 71.6 million birr income from tourism.

Mikias Israel, deputy head of the bureau said yesterday that the 71.6 million birr was obtained from 403,470 local and 72, 537 foreign tourists who visited attraction sites in the region over the last nine months.

Mikias said the amount of the income obtained and the number of tourists who visited the region over the last nine months had increased by 56 percent and 45 percent respectively, in comparison with the same period the previous year.

Expansion of infrastructures such as road, telecommunications, electricity and tourists' facilities as well as extensive promotion made by the bureau contributed to the income and increase in number of tourists, he said.

The region is rich with sites of natural and historical attraction like crocodile ranches, hot springs, caves and waterfalls among others and Mikias said the Bureau was doing its best to exploit these.

Source: Walta Information Centre

Wednesday, 15 June 2011

The Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT) is preparing to establish a factory for the production of PVC raw materials at a cost of two billion birr. The factory will be set up near Mesobo, Tigray Regional State, an area endowed with large limestone deposits.

Currently, about 40,000 metric tons of raw materials are imported for manufacturing PVC products in the water development and the construction sectors. The company aims to reduce the flight of foreign currency by supplying the demand for the raw material.

Sources say that the factory will use Chinese technology, though it has made no official announcement regarding its decisions. The formation of the company, supervised by Ezana Mining Development (another EFFORT company), is not yet complete.

This factory will become the fourteenth EFFORT company next to Mesfin Industrial Engineering, Mesobo Cement Factory, Sur Construction, Baba Dimensional Stone, Trans Ethiopia, Express Transit, Guna Trading, Addis Pharmaceuticals, Sheba Tannery, Hiwot Agriculture, Almeda Textile, Experience Ethiopia and Ezana Mining Development.

Source: The Reporter

Tuesday, 14 June 2011

Seacom Ltd., a company that operates a fibre-optic link in East Africa, said it was planning to extend the cable into Burundi, Southern Sudan and Somalia in cooperation with partners as demand for internet services continues to grow.

"We would like to expand our footprint," Julius Opio, the company's regional head, said. But he refused to give more details.

Opio said that the first country to be linked to the cable would be Brundi once it has installed 1,300 kilometres (810 miles) of fibre network next year. The cable would then be extended to Southern Sudan within a year of its independence, scheduled for July 9. Over the following two or three years, the cable will be extended to Somalia, he said.

The company currently has fibre-optic links in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya (where its east and north African office is based), Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, Opio said.

Source: Bloomberg