Logistics sector actors mock the draft Multimodal Transport Operators Qualification and Licensing Directive which they claim is not properly crafted. However, the Logistics Office argued that it is under the draft stage and is more or less trying to accommodate the recommendation of the private sector.
On Thursday April 8, the sector actors and representatives of the Ministry of Transport (MoT), responsible for developing the directive had discussed the draft directive that targets to ease the multimodal monopoly for selected five players.
On the discussion, the sector actors heard that the proposal never took account details of the implantation process. They said that the directive was supposed to consider the coordination of other public offices for the realization of the government strategy.
The directive seems impractical without the coordination of other offices like customs, central bank, investment commission and others.
“The opening up of the multimodal sector is crucial for the sector in general and particularly for all over the economy since logistics is the backbone of any development in order to make it competitive and cost effective,” one of the private sector representative who attended the discussion told Capital. But he expressed his frustration that it seems that it is still never getting proper attention from the regulatory body, he states, “The draft directive shows me that the preparation process was very weak, which may directly align with the interest of the regulatory body.”
According to participants, for instance the draft directive stated the insurance coverage, whereas the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) has suspended insurers to give such directive.
“NBE does not allow insurers to provide unconditional guarantee, due to that companies are expected to deposit massive amount of money for guarantee. But the private sector does not have such kind of capacity or similarly for bank guarantee they have to have property for collateral, which is also difficult,” one of the logistics sector actors told Capital, adding, “In this two decades, the private sector does not own such kind of property for collateral.”
They said that the Investment Commission should have also a say on the directive to avail plots on lease or for free and also duty free scheme for import of machinery like other strategic sectors.
“For instance, the draft directive stated the ownership of five hectare of plot, a dry port, 3,000 meter square warehouse and other equipments including 30 owned trucks. To secure such mandatory facilities and equipments support is crucial that shall come from Investment Commission, while the directive does not mention about it,” one of the participants told Capital.
Similar issues have been in one way or another mentioned by participants to whom the regulatory body responded that it may revisit the draft document.
Despite participants criticizing the limitation of participants to five, the government has still shown a firm stands to restrict to 5 operators at the early stage.
However, if representatives do not give satisfactory response for the question for the selection of five companies more than the stated number of logistics actors with similar qualification may come. They said that it will be looked into and revised.
“Generally, I fill that one entity is only trying to show its effort for the sector, while it is dynamic,” a participant expressed his view.
One of the major freight forwarders appreciated the initiative that the government is considering to comprise the private sector on this, multimodal, valuable scheme, but argued that NBE should be part as well and consider the access to foreign currency to handle the business, “Otherwise it would not be applicable,” he emphasized.
“Leave alone the multimodal scheme that needs foreign currency for payment starting from loading port to Djibouti, but even at the current normal transit we are not able to settle the payment at Djibouti on time,” he told Capital.
“Not only the private sector but ESLSE is not paying its foreign currency accrued on time due to the shortened hard currency availability that is supposed to get prior attention by the central bank even before opening the multimodal,” he explained showing the other side of possible difficulty when the multimodal system becomes open.
According to the freight forwarder, who demands anonymity, the NBE commitment should be higher for the sector, besides incentives, which he said is crucial to ensure competition. “ESLSE is accessing plots for free or lease that the private sector should get too,” he explained.
He said it is heavy investment that would create massive jobs and ease of doing business in the country due to that it needs tax and other incentives like some strategic sectors.
“The draft directive has locked the service price which is not also feasible in this devaluation trend,” he added.
Experts on the sector added that standard operating procedure shall also be identified. A freight forwarder has also recommended the government to commence the arrangement of bonded warehouse to ease the insurance issue.
The draft proclamation indicated that the investor who would be selected to operate on the multimodal must have a capital of 350 million birr of which 10 percent is on cash.
It also said that different machineries related with loading and unloading must be availed by the investor.
“We are trying to do our best to include the recommendation of the private sector,” Ewnetu Taye, Ethiopian Logistics Transformation Office Deputy Managing Director stated. He reminded that four deliberations had been conducted with the private sector besides receiving written comments, three times from them.
Regarding the comments on availability of foreign currency, he said that the investors should have understood the condition in the country. He reminded that although there is a delay on payment, still the government is committed to make available hard currency for ESLSE. “It is difficult to give full guarantee regarding the hard currency,” Ewnetu, who chaired Thursday’s meeting, said, adding “Besides that we are preparing a proposal to table for the government that finds ways to ease the hard currency issue. it would be implemented in relation with the implementation of the new directive.”
He added that the multimodal scheme by itself is saving the hard currency, which indirectly shall manage the issue of the hard currency.
According to the information from Ministry of Transport, the country enabled to save USD 20 million every year because of the multimodal operation, which is so far controlled by ESLSE.
“The insurance issue is related with customs but the experience of Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Service Enterprise (ESLSE) different than the claim from the private sector,” Ewnetu told Capital.
He said that Ethiopian Insurance Corporation, a state owned enterprise, is providing the coverage with attractive premium. “ESLSE is working on insurance bond and we believe that it will continue as per the current status,” he added.
On the other hand, since the sector is newly opened there have been several initiatives by different stakeholders to encourage the private sector role with different mechanism. Ewnetu underlined that the incentive may not directly be related with the duty free and other approaches, while there are programs designed by the government regarding the sector.
According to Ewnetu, the directive will be finalized and ratified in this budget year.
Multimodal scheme is the operation that handling cargos on coordinated manner with a single documents and different mode of transports from initial port to the final destination.
The first logistics policy that was recently issued indicated that one of the main benefits of a multimodal transport system is its great significance in saving foreign currency. Therefore, it is important to enhance the multimodal transport system.
“Multi-modal transport systems are mainly operated using sea shipping thus integrating other modes of transport such as sea transport, seaport and air transport is important. Making these modes of transport become multimodal transport operators increases service coverage and eventually benefits our country. Thus, the government has a belief to create additional multimodal operators,” the policy stated expressing its commitment for the sector development.
ESLSE is the sole operator of multimodal that was introduced about a decade ago.
Logistics actors mock impractical draft directive
Ethiopian resident among six recognized for strengthening life-saving health services and building community health infrastructure
With less than half of the global population receiving essential health services, Rotary members are taking action to connect those in need to life-saving treatment and disease prevention, while helping to strengthen community health systems.
Teguest Yilma Bultcha, Chair of Rotary’s Ethiopia National PolioPlus Committee and founding member of the Rotary Club of Addis Ababa Entoto, is one of six Rotary People of Action: Champions of Health. She was selected from more than 100 nominees, and is being recognized for her work to ensure communities maintained access to basic health services and for promoting the resumption of essential immunization programs against polio and measles during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A long-standing managing editor of weekly newspaper Capital, Teguest Yilma has put her journalistic experience to work, raising awareness about polio vaccinations and the importance of strengthening routine immunization programs. She has also worked alongside fellow Rotary members to expand services to children who have suffered the impacts of polio.
“COVID-19 shows us how important a strong healthcare system is,” said Rotary International President Holger Knaack. “Treating and preventing disease is one of Rotary’s top causes. I am inspired by our members who are helping millions of our most vulnerable in receiving essential health services. With local knowledge, skills and innovative thinking, our six Champions of Health are strengthening health care systems and helping more people gain access to care in the long term.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Rotary’s Ethiopia National PolioPlus Committee has focused on maintaining routine immunization services for children. Under Teguest Yilma’s leadership, the Committee developed public awareness campaigns and events, including a high-level panel discussion in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) and other partners that addressed how to prioritize and adapt immunization services during the Covid-19 pandemic, and how to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on vaccine-preventable diseases.
Rotary brings together a global network of volunteer leaders dedicated to tackling the world’s most pressing humanitarian challenges. Rotary connects 1.2 million members of more than 36,000 Rotary clubs in over 200 countries and geographical areas. Their work improves lives at both the local and international levels, from helping those in need in their own communities to working towards a polio-free world.
FAKE EVERYTHING
Modern governments invariably lie and intentionally mislead their citizens at the various junctions of modernity’s tightly organized existence! In fact, many of the policies of governments that are implemented on a daily basis are borne of lies. Without blatant lies, camouflaged as progress, development, nationalism, patriotism, internationalism, blah, blah, politicos running the global show, always via the instrument of governments, wouldn’t have been able to have monopolistic hold on state power! If truth be told, many of the foundations of modern societies are fake, ill-conceived and unsustainable. Yet and thanks to deeply entrenched lies prevailing in all societies, myriad unsustainabilities keep marching on!
When human societies or nations-states, to be more precise, try to build their reality on the conception of ‘infinite growth on a finite planet, it is obvious they are preaching a dangerously ‘fake narrative’. When states pronounce the rate of climate change to be according to their whims rather than the unpredictable imperatives of natural laws, it is clear governments are teaching ‘fake science’. When productive and sustainable works are demoted while phony money, which is created out of thin air and on a continuous basis, tramples hard work, it is obvious humanity is wallowing in a swamp of ‘fake economics’. Currently, even the once humbling hard sciences are made to bow down to the shallow interests of bureaucrats and their handlers, so that taxpayers’ money is swindled/diverted to benefit ‘deep state’ operators! The gullible sheeple (human mass) systemically indoctrinated to accept almost everything that is spewed out by the deep state, is made to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution!
In the realm of the sciences, such fantastic fictions as intergalactic travel, or the colonization of planets that lie several light years away, (a light year is 9.46 x 1012 km) have become part and parcel of the ongoing ‘fake narratives’ regarding the cosmos. Let us illustrate some easy ‘facts’, obtained from our ever-changing knowledge. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has an average width of about 100,000 light years, i.e., a distance of 946,000,000,000,000,000 km. Let us say we can miraculously come up with a technology that can propel us a billion km per hour, that is 1,000,000,000 km per hour. To bring it down to earth, this is like going around our planet 25,000 times an hour! With this mighty speed it takes us over 100,000 years just to escape the confines our own average size galaxy. We can only say ‘go figure’, just like the perplexed teenager! The delicate creature that came about unknowingly, certainly outside of its flimsy perception and conception, has convinced itself to be potentially capable of travelling billions of kilometers per day into the outer space where there are plenty of unknowns, radiation, etc. (think Van Allen radiation belt) to inhabit or colonize, (to use the sickening word of the establishment) entities that can support what we know as life! Human’s fragility, always demands the continuous supply of oxygen in order to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, etc. This is not an organism that is built for space travel, despite the insinuation of the deep state, via its propaganda machines that includes the movie industry, perforce!
We can hardly maintain life on the planet that was given to us on a silver platter, let alone think of roaming around the mighty cosmos as if it were some kind of Disney land! Like it or not, indoctrinating rather than enlightening is the core ideology of the so-called modern nation-states. If their sheeple becomes enlightened then realistic questions will be raised as to why we are leading such a decisively suicidal existence, here on our rare blue planet! At this point we believe, one has to realize the evil-minded amongst us. There are a whole lot of people who are not interested in the continuation of life after them. In the lingua of modern psychiatry, they are called sociopaths/psychopaths. All they are interested in is temporal gratifications that always come with costly attendant consequences. Take the case of nuclear energy. There is no doubt there is a very real risk associated with all sorts of nuclear power. This is a proven fact, however much the ‘deep state’ tries to hide this reality. Yet the peddlers of nuclear power plants/arsenals still want to push nuclear power based technologies, as if they were very safe and almost risk free. As a result, everybody and his uncle (Middle East, Africa, etc.) think it is a worthwhile project to pursue!
The burning issue then becomes, how to change our fake narratives? For a start, independence from the so-called indoctrination machines is a must. Unfortunately, this includes distancing the global citizenry away from the so-called institutions of ‘enlightenment’. They have become quite toxic, at least as they are constituted today! Secondly, one has to recognize the Main Stream Media (MSM) is at best noxious, if not deadly poisonous, particularly when it comes to reflective and critical thinking. Look at the tragedy-comedy-the case of the wealthy pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Not long ago, he was revered as a successful ‘billionaire’, even though nobody knew how he actually made his money. The mainstream media has stopped questioning the very processes of acquiring wealth, so long as the person in question is a stooge of the deep state, just like the numerous cases of criminal accumulation in our part of the world. It is only when things start to get hot, the dubious characters in question attract some attention, good or bad!
For better or worse, humanity survived because it had to do what it had to do, mostly by critically and continuously examining its evolved reality within the broader realm of the natural environment. The human animal did not ‘ascend’, so to speak, again for better or worse, not by the state of quackery and fakery! Yet, when it comes to the world of politicos and their affairs, the mantra still remains; “When it gets serious, you have to lie” Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission. Good Day!
Ethiopia calls Sudan, Egypt to nominate dam operators for data exchange
Ethiopia invites Sudan and Egypt to nominate dam operators for data exchange before the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in the coming rainy seasons on the aim of confidence-building measures among the three countries on the project.
Ethiopia frequently expressed its desire that it wants partnership and cooperation on mutual benefit under a principle of win-win manner for the development of Abay (Nile) River. Regarding the hydroelectric, it had also indicated that it would not have significant harm on the downstream countries that was also proofed by experts of the three countries.
In its latest statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) indicated that Seleshi Bekele, Minister of Water, Irrigation, and Energy of Ethiopia, formally invited Sudan and Egypt to nominate dam operators to exchange data before the second filling of the GERD which is set to commence in the upcoming rainy seasons in Ethiopia.
In the letters addressed to Minister of Water Affairs of Sudan and Egypt, the Minister of Water Affairs, Ethiopia invited the two countries to nominate focal persons or dam operators to exchange data among the three countries with regards to the second-year filling which will take place in July and August 2021.
“According to the letters, the invitation was based on the consensus that was reached on the filling schedule formulated by the National Independent Scientific Research Group (NISRG) of the three countries along with the period of the filling in July and August and it may continue in September depending on the hydrology,” the statement of Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained.
It added that stating the progress of the GERD construction and the approaching rainy seasons in Ethiopia, where the filling is scheduled, the Minister of Water, Irrigation and Energy of Ethiopia underlined the need to work together on practical and important communication arrangements.
MoFA on its statement indicated that nominating focal persons soon will expedite appropriate information exchange arrangements and confidence-building measures among the tripartite until the conclusion of the GERD negotiation under the auspices of the African Union, the letters read.
The letter underlined the importance of immediate conclusion of agreement on the rules and guidelines on first filling in accordance with article 5, a of the Declaration of Principle (DoP) that was signed by the three countries in 2015 which will offer a good opportunity to build confidence and trust among the parties.
