2merkato

The official representatives of the Coca Cola Company in Ethiopia the East African Bottling Company has received land from the Bahir Dar city government to construct its plant in Ethiopia. The project is expected to cost a total of 800 million Ethiopian birr.

It is expected that construction work on the plant at Bahir Dar will begin early next year and is to be completed in a year. The site for the new plant was selected after a survey conducted by a team from South Africa which studied the availability of drainage. Links to the road network in the area and access to water supplies according to sources.

East African Bottling has signed an agreement for the construction of the plant with Elmo-Olindo a construction company previously engaged for rehabilitation and expansion efforts undertaken by the Coca Cola producer.

Coca Cola announced that it will make its products available in plastic bottles and is finalizing the construction of the plastic containers’ production facility located inside the compounds of the company's plant in Addis Ababa.

“We will launch our products in plastic bottles soon. We are making sure that we have a well-established recycling system before we launch the products. The recycling system we will have in place will involve communities and create job opportunities,” said Greig Jansen, CEO of East African Bottling S.C.

Coffee exports in Ethiopia were 50% below target in the past nine months of the financial year and are expected to decrease even further.

Ethiopia had anticipated raising 1.17 billion US dollars from the export of 288,000 tons of coffee. The failure to meet targets was due to the instability of the international market claimed Kebede Chane Minister of Trade. It is expected that coffee exports will reach 70% of target by the end of the fiscal year he said.

The country exported 98,000 tons of coffee in the first nine months which amounted to 48% of target exports raising 66% of the target revenue.

The prices of unwashed Arabica coffee from Ethiopia are reported to have decreased by an estimated 6.9% on the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange last week.

The fall in prices occurred as the volume of washed and unwashed coffee traded on the exchange increased from 2295 metric ton to 2529 metric tons said an email statement from the exchange on Dec 9th.

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa announced that it is to implement a pilot project on Virtual Trade Facilitation System in the Djibouti Corridor of Ethiopia.

The project is expected to enhance regional competitiveness, to expand trade, exchange information and coordinate activities according to Ahmed Shide, State Minister for Finance and Economic Development speaking at COMMESA Trade Facilitation Workshop held in Addis Ababa.

The system facilitates the tracking of cargo, control of the movement of goods and monitor and to ensure the efficiency, time management, cost effectiveness and transparency reducing time and cost for cross border and local transport as well as transit traffic along the corridor he added.