2merkato

A new insurance company, Lucy, launched operations in the Ethiopian Insurance sector last week after receiving license to operate from the National Bank at the beginning of the last month.

Lucy Insurance was founded by 13 business people to become the 16th insurance company in the country said Alemseged Abraham, chief Executive of the company.

The Share Company collected 8.03 million birr in paid up capital from 39 shareholders and held its first annual General Meeting last March.

Lufthansa, the German-based airliner is to  enhance its partnership with Ethiopian in 2013, according to a press briefing held in Addis Ababa on June 10, 2013.

Lufthansa is aiming to enhance its stake by five percent in 2013 from the previous year, Carsten Schaeffer, Lufthansa's vice-president for sales and services, South-East Europe, Middle East and Africa said.

In 2012, more than 80,000 passengers were served through the partnership between Lufthansa and Ethiopian, however, Carsten  declined to reveal the revenue collected from the services. He told The Reporter, an Ethiopian Weekly, “We don’t want to talk about details of numbers, it is promising and we are happy to invest further.

M-BIRR, one of Ethiopia’s mobile banking service provider, has partnered up with Total Ethiopia in order to enhance payment for fuel, lubricants as well as goods purchase.

Ethiopian Airlines and Safaricom Ethiopia unveiled the introduction of the M-PESA Wallet as a payment method. The M-PESA Wallet serves as an online mobile payment solution, streamlining the booking process for Ethiopian and cross-border customers. With the M-PESA Wallet, travelers can conduct online bookings, payments, and ticket purchases.

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.