New home, car loan program set for Ethiopian Airline staff

Six private banks and the state owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia have offered documents allowing them to provide loans for permanent Ethiopian Airline staff so they can buy homes and cars.
Asrat Begashaw, Manager of Corporate Communications at Ethiopian Airlines said that the negotiations are underway but declined to say which banks are involved.
“I don’t want to mention the names but I can tell you that in two weeks we will announce the winners who will provide loans for our staff.”
“The reason we invited bidders was because we need to retain our workers and allow them to live better lives by providing benefits.”
The new loan system which is expected to be implemented in the next Ethiopian year will incorporate over 12,000 permanent airline staff.
Previously Ethiopian Airlines constructed houses and gave them to its staff, through its own loan system. Employees had to work a certain number of years in order to keep the home. In a 60/40 percent sharing scheme between the airline and its employees, Ethiopian Airlines delivered 1,192 houses, constructed with 1.5 billion birr to its homeowners on July, 2018. The Airline covered 60 percent of the cost of the project in a loan arrangement with its employees.
But the new loan system has no mandatory time requirement for people to keep the house or the car if they pay off the loan.
Founded in December 1945, Ethiopian started operating on April 8, 1946. The first scheduled flight was made to Cairo via Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, in a Douglas C-47 Sky Train.
The national airline had been set up a few months earlier as Ethiopian Air Lines Inc – a joint venture with the American airline, TWA (Trans World Airlines). The National Airline Training Project was set up, in 1957, in Addis Ababa, with help from the US Government, to train local pilots, technicians and supervisory personnel.
In the year 2017/18 the airline earned a net profit of a USD 233 million or 6.87 billion birr and now has over 127 destinations.