Following various social media page posts, accounts and channels that Ethiopian Airlines CEO, Tewolde G.Mariam fled the country, it is now confirmed that he is still doing his job while on a medical leave in the US.
“I am undergoing medical treatment in the United States and I am working in our office based in the US” Tewolde replied to a media outlet. Sources told Capitalcheck that he was undergoing treatment in the US for the past few months and have been doing work from there.
The draft bill to establish the Ethiopian National Dialogue Commission has been tabled to the House of Peoples’ Representatives (HPR), with approval expected to be in a short period, government officials indicate.
On Saturday December 25, 2021, the House of People’s Representative started a public hearing on the overall proclamation and national dialogue to launch the much anticipated all inclusive dialogue.
On its second regular meeting held on December 10, the Council of Ministers discussed the draft proclamation establishing the Ethiopian National Dialogue Commission and passed a draft proclamation in establishing the commission.
The nationwide dialogue is said to bring together the various political interests in the country, in order to facilitate an all-inclusive national dialogue. The commission will be an impartial and independent organ of the Federal Government with its own legal personality and is to be accountable to the House of Peoples’ Representatives.
According to the draft proclamation, the term of the office is three years though if necessary the term may be extended by the HPR. As experts suggest, the dialogue could take from three to five years.
The commission has the responsibility to craft the agenda for the dialogue, organize the dialogues and facilitate deliberations and organize and convene dialogue forums at the federal and regional levels that would bring about national consensus with the participation of representatives of various segments of society drawn from the entire country after identifying and enabling participants to take part at a national dialogue conference in accordance with clear criteria and procedures.
As indicated on the draft, the Commission shall have eleven commissioners, appointed by the HPR based upon nomination by the Prime Minister; also commissioners should not be a member of any political party.
As Indicated on the draft, commissioners have immunity from criminal prosecution during the course of their service unless one is caught in flagrante delicto or one’s immunity is stripped by the HPR.
Regarding the budget, the commission is said to get its budget from the government. Notwithstanding, the Commission may collect fund from other provision legal sources as well.
Demands for a national dialogue have become rather extensive since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) came to power following widespread protests across the nation.
“There are difference in opinions and disagreements among various opinion leaders and segments of society in Ethiopia on the most fundamental national issues and it is a necessity to alleviate and resolve the differences and disagreements through broad based inclusive public dialogue that engenders national consensus,” explains the proclamation to establish the Ethiopian National Dialogue Commission on the importance of the dialogue.
The national initiative for a national dialogue in the country is being run by a consortium of civil society organizations, political parties and the government as an entity under the name Multi stakeholder Initiative for National Dialogue (MIND-Ethiopia). The initiative was launched in August 2020, by eight organizations drawn from civic societies, the government and political parties. Over the past one year, MIND has been holding dialogues at different levels with various representatives of the general public including political parties, local level community members, media stakeholders, historians, and the government.
Since its establishment, MIND Ethiopia has been developing a concept note on the National Dialogue, preparing a strategic plan, setting up an institutional arrangement, developing a code of conduct and communication strategy.
Coffee traders over the moon with the decision
The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) gives a short term two percent waiver for commercial banks on their reserves.
The new decision comes just after a few months of the NBE’s decision which stated banks to increase their reserve requirements to ten percent within three months period from the previous five-percentage.
It is recalled that under the 7th amendment of setting the reserve requirement Directive No.SBB/80/2021 that was issued late August reversing the SBB/55/2013 Directive that was issued on March 1, 2013, NBE ordered banks to double their reserves.
“While as per the latest decision the reserve requirement rate has technically dropped to 8 percent,” a bank president told Capital.
According to the information Capital obtained from bankers, the latest waiver is given for about seven months.
Sources said that the decision was made in an aim to support the coffee trade, “it is harvesting season and the main trading of coffee that started from farmers to exporters is carried out in this coming season thus the decision that was passed by the regulatory body targets to accelerate the beans business.”
Adugna Debela (PhD), Head of Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority, welcomes the decision of NBE and said that it is more than the expectation of the coffee sector actors.
In a statement issued by NBE Board of Directors chaired by Girma Birru on August 27, it passed several monetary policy decisions including the revision of banks’ reserve. It said that the board reviewed recent economic and financial sector developments and decided to modify the reserve requirement, the interest rate on individual banks’ lending facility, the forex surrender requirement and the forex retention right.
Besides this decision the government has also suspended the disbursement of fresh loans for all sectors initially and that was easy for very few selected sectors until recently. The general loan suspension has also been lifted recently.
Experts in the financial industry said that the decision of the NBE board to double the reserve requirements was mainly to curb the growing inflation.
Even though its existence would be short, the eight percent reserve requirement has been stated by experts as a new rate in the reserve history.
The country first introduced the reserve requirement through Directive No. SBB/14/96 which became effective on January 1, 1996 with a 10 percent requirement. The highest reserve requirement was 15 percent under the 4th amendment of Directive No. SBB/45/2008, which was effective on April 7, 2008 and lasted till January 1, 2012 to reduce to 10 percent. It is recalled that 2008 and the following years were the period that the country saw the highest inflation ever.
It was recorded that in the first quarter of 2008 the general inflation stood at 60 percent, while the food inflation was at 81 percent.
Due to that at the time besides increasing the reserve percentage the government had applied different monetary and other tools to control the inflation.
The current measure particularly targets to ease the access to finance for coffee bean traders. Coffee contributes to the country about one third of the hard currency from export.
The bean, which is the main export commodity and hard currency in the modern commercial history of Ethiopia, contributed a record USD 907 million in the past budget year that ended July 7. The current year export earning from the bean is also expected to break new record and to surpass a billion dollar revenue.
Recently Adugna told Capital that the performance registered in the first months of the 2021/22 budget year indicates that the country shall easily achieve a billion dollar earning from coffee in which its price has also registered records in the global market due to production reduction in Brazil and logistics related challenges.
Late last week the coffee sector leader, Adugna, told Capital that the case has been raised on the meeting of National Export Coordination Committee for the coffee sector to get special attention regarding access to finance.
“The contribution of coffee for the national economy and export is known, due to that it needs specific attention from NBE and banks. Even though we have been trying our best for the sector to get attention the latest decision of NBE is more than our expectation,” he said.
Adugna said that the NBE decision is a dedicated finance for the coffee sector that will have positive news for suppliers and exports, “it is also timely since it is the peak season for coffee trading.”
Under the direction of National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) financial firms are in rush to know their customers ahead of the deadline in February 2022. Accounts that do not have the required profile shall be transferred to the regulatory body.
In the past few weeks banks have been approaching their customers through different communication tools like text message (SMS), phone call or media announcement to appear at their branch and recheck their accounts information.
Bank clerks that reside in different banks’ branches told Capital that the new scheme has become an additional workload for them since the number of account holders who are visiting branches are growing by the day.
“The new scheme has imposed further burden on our day to day activity,” a clerk said.
The clerk explained that despite being in a branch that is not regarded as a big branch with regards to the number of account holders, the numbers of visitors have continued to increase in the past few weeks.
“Our bank has already called all its customers to visit their branches. We will also give a call for customers if they do not appear in the coming weeks,” another bank clerk that works on the branch located around Bole Medhanialem told Capital.
She said that the bank called all of its accountholders regardless of customers having the required document like photo and ID with the bank, for a thorough check.
One customer that Capital interviewed for instance said that he received an SMS from the bank that he has a deposit account with, and went on to visit his branch. “However I have learnt that all the required profile was already filled when I opened the account years back and I have proved that on my latest visit to my branch,” he explained his case.
The work load mainly on big banks is very huge according to bankers since their bank account holders are in millions, while the story of Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) is different owing to its large customer base.
One of the clerks that Capital talked to at one of the state giant CBE branches said that the number of customers visiting in relation with the latest announcement has an unprecedented flocking of customers at their doorstep.
CBE has over 34 million accountholders. Recently Yinager Dessie, Governor of NBE, said that in relation with last year’s currency change an additional 7.2 million bank accounts have been opened. It is estimated about 60 million accounts are opened across all banks.
The new rush is followed by the NBE directive of knowing your customers (KYC) and customer due diligence (CDD) that issued in August 27 which became effective the same day.
The directive, ‘requirements for undertaking account based transactions and ensuring of regulatory limits directive No. FIS/04/2021’ on its preamble stated that KYC and CDD practices are critical to ensure proper identification of customers, appropriate assessment and monitoring of transactions including ensuring of proper compliance to regulatory transaction limits set by NBE.
It added that the implementation of KYC and CDD shall combat illegal and unauthorized transactions.
Thus the directive ordered banks or microfinance institutions and payment instrument issuers to have relevant information of their customers.
Article five sub article 5.1 for instance stated that in opening a deposit account, a financial institution shall at a minimum record comprehensive customer profile that allows it to acquire adequate knowledge of the customer and identify suspicious transactions in a relatively easy and swift manner. “To this end a financial institution shall use annex I, which is part of a directive as a sample on how financial firms register customers profile, of the directive as a minimum standard for account opening at all time in a manner that ensures consistency across the financial industry,” it added.
NBE has given six months starting from August 27 as a transition period that financial firms capturing required customer profile from existed and new customers and configuring existing system in a manner that would enable a financial firms to issue unique customers ID and introduce centralized account opening approval. The transitional period includes loading of the information to the financial institution’s system.
For those who failed to comply with the requirements of this directive the penalty would be from 20,000 to 100,000 birr that differ as per the britches, while other administration measures shall be applied.
According to the information obtained from bankers, the account of those who do not have the required profile shall be transferred to the regulatory body.
Capital is the longest-established private English newspaper in Ethiopia
Contact us: info@capitalethiopia.com
© Newspaper WordPress Theme by TagDiv
