2merkato

The Privatization and Public Enterprise Supervisory Agency of Ethiopia is to privatize four farms and four factories that are currently publicly owned.

The four farms are Ababo, Bilito, Gojeb and Siraro. Bilito, Gojeb and Siraro farms are divisions of Hawassa Farm Development and Coffee and Tea Development Farm.

The four factories up for privatization are Awash Wine, Ethiopian Marble, Kality Metal and Upper Awash Agro. PPESA is expected to privatize fifty five more government operated enterprises in the future.

Ethiopia is set to privatize six enterprises through auction as the financial year winds down. Ghion Hotel and Awash Winery are expected to be part of the six according to sources.

The minimum price set for Ghion Hotel is expected to be between 100 and 150 million US dollars whereas the indicative price for Awash Winery will be set at 438 million birr according to unofficial sources.

This was not confirmed by Wondafrash Assefa, Director of Corporate Communications for the Privatization and Public Enterprises Supervising Agency.

Ethiopia is to privatize two more enterprises with the board of the Privatization and Public Enterprises Agency approving the offers made for Caustic Soda SC and the warehouses of Faffa foods.

Caustic Soda will be purchased by MCC Imports for 14.8 million birr and the warehouses of Faffa foods will be sold to a Nejib Abba Biya, Ethiopia Canadian Businessperson, for 414,100 US dollars.

It is to be remembered that the PPESA is seeking interested bidders for two of the five enterprises it had offered for privatization in the same lot as Caustic Soda and the Faffa foods.

The tax authority of Ethiopia is to probe petroleum distributing companies on potential windfall gains following the regular price adjustments to the price of fuel by the government.

The Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority will launch the investigation in the coming weeks and will levy windfall tax should it discover that the companies are earning undeclared gains from the price adjustments according to sources.  

The tax authority was notified of the windfall gains in the sector by anonymous informants who presented a study conducted on seven petroleum companies it was learned.

Ethiopia is borrowing 1.78 billion birr to produce 50MW of power from refuse accumulated at the Repi Waste Disposal in Addis Ababa according to the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation. This ground breaking effort is part of plans to diversify the national power supply it was said.

The EEPCo signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Cambridge Industries, a UK company, to facilitate the project including garbage collection, treatment and conversion to electric power.

The financing for the project was obtained through a low interest loan said Miskir Negash, Head of Public Relation of the corporation.