The International Air Transport Association (IATA) warned that the amount of airline funds for repatriation being blocked by governments has risen by more than 25% ($394 million) in the last six months. Total funds blocked now tally at close to $2.0 billion. IATA calls on governments to remove all barriers to airlines repatriating their revenues from ticket sales and other activities, in line with international agreements and treaty obligations.
IATA is also renewing its calls on Venezuela to settle the $3.8 billion of airline funds that have been blocked from repatriation since 2016 when the last authorization for limited repatriation of funds was allowed by the Venezuelan government.
“Preventing airlines from repatriating funds may appear to be an easy way to shore up depleted treasuries, but ultimately the local economy will pay a high price. No business can sustain providing service if they cannot get paid and this is no different for airlines. Air links are a vital economic catalyst. Enabling the efficient repatriation of revenues is a critical for any economy to remain globally connected to markets and supply chains,” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General.
Airline funds are being blocked from repatriation in more than 27 countries and territories.
The top five markets with blocked funds (excluding Venezuela) are Nigeria ($551 million), Pakistan ($225 million), Bangladesh ($208 million), Lebanon ($144 million), and Algeria ($140 million).
Nigeria
Total airline funds blocked from repatriation in Nigeria are $551 million. Repatriation issues arose in March 2020 when demand for foreign currency in the country outpaced supply and the country’s banks were not able to service currency repatriations.
Despite these challenges Nigerian authorities have been engaged with the airlines and are, together with the industry, working to find measures to release the funds available.
“Nigeria is an example of how government-industry engagement can resolve blocked funds issues. Working with the Nigerian House of Representatives, Central Bank and the Minister of Aviation resulted in the release of $120 million for repatriation with the promise of a further release at the end of 2022. This encouraging progress demonstrates that, even in difficult circumstances, solutions can be found to clear blocked funds and ensure vital connectivity,” said Kamil Al-Awadhi as Regional Vice President for Africa and the Middle East.
Venezuela
Airlines have also restarted efforts to recover the $3.8 billion of unrepatriated airline revenues in Venezuela. There have been no approvals of repatriation of these airline funds since early 2016 and connectivity to Venezuela has dwindled to a handful of airlines selling tickets primarily outside the country. In fact, between 2016 and 2019 (the last normal year before COVID-19) connectivity to/from Venezuela plummeted by 62%. Venezuela is now looking to bolster tourism as part of its COVID-19 economic recovery plan and is seeking airlines to restart or expand air services to/from Venezuela. Success will be much more likely if Venezuela is able to instill confidence in the market by expeditiously settling past debts and providing concrete assurances that airlines will not face any blockages to future repatriation of funds.
Amount of blocked airline funds rising
Call For Application
If you are a local solar home systems and/or solar pumps manufacturer/assembler in Ethiopia, apply to the Grand challenge before January 16 2023. It is a competition presented by Precise consult’s Solar Appliance Manufacturing(SAM) program that intends to systematically select existing high potential local solar systems manufacturers and assemblers based on a pre-determined eligibility criteria and provide tailored technical supports for qualified applicants to boost their production capacity.
ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENT
To be eligible to participate in the grand challenge, applicants must meet the following eligibility criteria.
- The applicant must be a registered entity and incorporated in Ethiopia.
- The applicant should be operating in Ethiopia for at least 3 years.
- The applicant should have audited financial statements for at least 3 years.
- The applicant should be engaged in assembly and manufacturing of solar pumps or demonstrate the capacity to enter assembly and manufacturing of solar pumps
- The applicant should have existing facility that is currently used or can be used for assembly and manufacturing of solar pumps
- The applicant should have the technical capacity in terms of qualified staff and the financial capacity of local currency working capital needed for solar pump local manufacturing.
- The applicant’s manufacturing proposal must be implementable in Q1 2023 with a project duration of 12 months and ending by December 31, 2023.
- The Applicant shall not have been the subject of bankruptcy, liquidation, judicial settlement, safeguarding, conviction of illicit activities, cessation of activity or any other similar situation resulting from a similar procedure.
- Only applications that meet the eligibility requirements and minimum criteria for the submission will be scored.
To apply: Please visit Precise website
https://preciseethiopia.com/news/CALL%20FOR%20APPLICATION-The%20Grand%20challenge
Open until January16, 2023.
www.preciseethiopia.com
Unexpected downpour in Djibouti impedes port, road logistics
Erratic showers pour in Djibouti hampering logistic activities of Ethiopia’s vital imports.
Those, who closely follow the issue from Djibouti, informed Capital that for the past few days, unusual rains have been hitting Djibouti which is peculiar since the country is known for its low annual rainfall.
The observers elaborated that the situation in the country has affected the logistics operation at ports and even road transport.
Roba Megersa, CEO of Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Services Enterprise (ESLSE), told Capital that the Djibouti rains had affected the cargo unloading operation for one shift on Saturday.
“However on January 1st and today, January 2nd, the activity has fully been halted,” he added.
Roba reminded that currently, the port which is discharging fertilizer cargo has had its operations suspended as a result of the sudden showers.
“We cannot even open the vessel hatch because the rain would damage the fertilizer cargo,” he explained, adding, “Unprecedented weather conditions in Djibouti have deterred our operations.”
Early last week, for the upcoming agriculture season, the first fertilizer vessel, MV Great Comfort which sailed from Morocco had docked its anchorage with 57, 295 metric tons at the modern port facility of Doraleh Multipurpose Port.
Roba disclosed that because of the recent weather conditions the discharge operations did not go planned, “Fertilizer is a sensitive product which can easily be affected by the shower.”
Djibouti Ports Corridor Road (DPCR), a body which was established a few years ago under Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority (DPFZA) to modernize the logistics roads corridor, on Sunday January 1st disclosed that torrential rains caused flooding at several crossing points, “We would like to inform users of the corridor roads of the situation concerning the current bad weather throughout the national territory.”
However later DPCR stated that there are some sort of improvements in some areas.
Recently Aboubaker Omar Hadi, Chairman of DPFZA, told Capital that the road condition linking both countries was noted to be a major challenge, stating, “Of course this setback was as a result of harsh weather conditions catalyzed by heavy rains, which led to disruptions in road network access within our borders.”
“We kept building and rebuilding the road, and the road was being washed out due to the heavy rains. Similarly, to some degree the rains also affected the railway transport, with cases of over-flooding,” Hadi pointed out whilst highlighting the situation of the latest weather condition affecting the activity in Djibouti.
What Makes a Nation
What’s worrying about Ethiopia is that anyone who has read Teklesadik Mekuria’s history books can grow up to believe that we leave in an identifiable ‘Ethiopian’ nation with an identifiable ‘Ethiopian’ people.
Is that really so? I will leave it to you.
First it may be necessary to clarify the term ‘nation’. In general discussion, a nation-state is called a ‘country’ or a ‘nation‘ or a ‘state.’ But there are quite a lot of different kinds of states and countries and only some of them are nations (or nation-states, which is when the nation and the state coincide, or shall I say, are homogeneous, in factors such as common language or territory). A ‘country’ is a territory with its associated polity (organization, institutions); some countries are not states at all, for example, Wales, which is a country within the multi-national state of the United Kingdom) and while most of the world is divided up into states now, it was not always so. Mongolia was a country long before it was a state, for instance.
States come in different forms too. Quite a lot of post-colonial states are actually composite multi-national states, like Ethiopia, functionally posing as nation-states (this, is perhaps one reason they tend to be so fragile).
Now that I have opened this can of worms and I am here talking about Ethiopia, I would argue that the better term that defines Ethiopia today is ‘Empire’. Yes Empire, which is defined as “a “political unit” made up of several territories and peoples… “usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries”, plus a top Decider with a maximum power (my add-on).
Let’s look first at the basics.
The rather unusual modern configuration of states, I think, fools a lot of people into imagining that the nation and its political expression, the nation-state, are the normal way that humans organize themselves. That’s not exact. The nation-state is sometimes framed as what you get when a nation acquires statehood, but the concept of a nation-state is more an ideal than a reality. Many of the world’s people do not feel that the ruling elite in their states promotes the people’s national interest, but only that of the ‘nationality’ of the ruling party. And since most of the world’s states right now are nation-states, or at least try to present themselves as such, many people are quick to assume that the nation-state is normal or even the correct form of state.
Ethiopia obviously fails the nation-state definition. It isn’t even remotely close. After all, what shared history, shared myth of origin will you draw upon that all Ethiopians (over 80 nation-nationalities) will find valid and applicable to them? What you could perhaps have is civic unity, a different thing with different causes which connects to the one shared identity, citizenship. rather than a shared past. The key thing here is that for societies like Ethiopia that possess strong cultural diversity which are territorially based and backed by strong sub-national identities, the nation-state model is ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst
You see, there is no single dominant Ethiopian story, but a collection of Ethiopian stories, none of which can claim primacy because none of them represent even a significant plurality of the population’s own personal origins. Our history is a history of Ethiopia (not exaggerating), not Ethiopians. Indeed, an appeal to the ‘nation’ for unity is always going to leave quite a lot of Ethiopian ‘citizens’ – perhaps even most of them – cold. Try calling Ethiopians to war to fight for the ‘bones of their ancestors’ and you see the problem immediately: whose bones? Which ancestors? Buried where? Different Ethiopians will give very different answers to those questions! But call Ethiopians to war because “your fellow citizens were attacked” and the response may, I repeat may, turn out to be real and emotive.
So what form of polity for Ethiopia?
Attempting to make policy on the assumption that Ethiopia is a nation begins with a category error. The effort to form a nation generally fails because the basic ingredients are wrong. The necessary binding agent has been actively removed, though that hasn’t stopped regular efforts to replace it with crude populism and xenophobia. In a way, one may feel pity for us who emotively long for the comfort of the nation because it is something we cannot have, but then there ought to be a country for the people who would rather not be in a nation.
Successful efforts to actually unify Ethiopians should focus not on national identity but on citizen identity, though I recognize citizenship does not make people Ethiopians. Citizenship over nationality has its advantages; the nation is an exclusive identity, but citizenship co-exists more easily with other identities – a necessary advantage in a country as unbelievably diverse as Ethiopia. Check out the United States, for example, a nation that puts emphasis on the citizen body over the nation, note its exceptional ability to deliver results, impact communities, embrace large numbers of immigrants successfully. That’s an ideal we should build the republic around. An ideal where the Gamo citizens of Ethiopia give their loyalty to the constitution of Ethiopia (hopefully to a new one), while still being able to practice their inherited Gamo traditions and run their lives the way they want, trying to get what they want by working, saving, learning, inventing and so forth. … so long as they do not infringe upon the basic rights of others.
For quite some time the national or central governments in Ethiopia possessed actual powers to manage economic and ideological energies. We see now that era is over. We need a real change. The key point is to understand what makes a nation is constructed…. and that requires exceptional leadership, which we lack, and exceptional political infrastructure, which we have not even begun to conceive.
