The Federal High Court has lifted a ban preventing the founder and shareholders of Holland Car Plc, Tadesse Tessema from talking to the media regarding the under liquidation firm.
The court stated that the ban, instituted about four years ago, goes against the constitution article 29(2).
That article says: ‘everyone has the right to freedom of expression without any interference. This right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any media of their choice.’
Tadesse had been prevented from issuing any statement by the Federal First Instance Court since September 2015. The Court had appointed a trustee for Holland who said it would hinder the liquidation process if Tadesse was allowed to give statements to the media.
However, in his appeal to the High Court last October, Tadesse, a Holland Diaspora and pioneer in Ethiopian car assembly, stated that the liquidation process is in the final stages and only disbursing the money to stakeholders remains to be done.
After Tadesse filed suit, asking the High Court to lift the ban, the Court responded by ruling that the trustee failed to show how Tadesse would create a problem with the final money disbursement process and that his constitutional rights were being violated.
Recently the Cassation Bench of Federal Supreme Court suspended Holland Car Plc from settling any payments other than taxes due to the claim of breaching the legal process given by the 5th Civil Bench of the Federal Higher Court at Lideta. The founder claimed that the company was sold for 42 million birr, while the court initially ruled the company should be sold for not less than 50 million birr.
Speech ban lifted for Holland Car owner
New driver’s license building in Kolfe
New cameras attempt to stop bribe problem
To reduce the burden of the Kality Drivers and Mechanics Training Institute, which is the only drivers practical exam center in Addis Ababa, the city administration is planning to build a new Driver’s Training Institute at Kolfe Keranio Sub -City.
The new institute lies on 9.4 hectares. It will be used to test 800 people on the practical exam and 1,200 on theory, per day.
The exam center will have CCTV cameras, three G+4 stories building and should consume up to 70 million birr for construction. It is expected to be open for business in two years.
There were plans to build a branch at CMC in May 2012. However, the site location was rejected in favor of an industrial development project.
Misgena Kebede, Vice Manager at the Driver and Vehicle Licensee Control Authority told Capital the new facility will speed up the process of issuing licenses.
“There are long lines for everything from small motorcycles to trucks, sometimes is takes months for a person to take the tests, so this new facility will go a long way towards reducing congestion.”
In related news, exam takers in Kality are complaining that they are being asked up to 3,500 birr in bribes to pass the exam tests, and if they don’t pay the chance of passing the exams are slim.
A young man named, Isayas told Capital that he gave 3,500 birr to the examiners because they asked him to do this before he entered the practical exam.
“Before I entered the exam the examiners told me that I must prepare the money otherwise it will be difficult for me to pass the exam and I had no choice and I gave them to take the exam otherwise they will say I failed even if I passed.’’
Currently, there are around 31 examiners working in the Kality Drivers and Mechanics Training Institute. According to Mesgana Kebede, the examiners have been observed cheating by police and government staff.
“We hear that bribes are being carried out in Kality to get a license. As a government body our duty is to verify this. We have opened some investigations and are taking action. The cameras that were being used to observe the practical test were not functioning for two years but for the past three weeks they have been working. There are 23 cameras so it is harder to cheat now. Soon we will install IT auditing in our office. This will show any exam taker what their practical exam is by looking at the video.”
Easter product prices stagnate, meat rises
Easter is one of the major holidays that Ethiopians celebrate. Most of the time a holiday marks an increase in market prices and a shortage of commodities. Now the political situation in the country is also contributing to the increase in price.
For Bizunesh Amare 47, a mother of three, the holiday is always special as her three children and four grandsons come home to visit. As she lives behind Amce Area, Shola Gebeya is the best and nearest place that she visits usually, regardless of the season.
She is negotiating with Derbi Girma who is there to sell chickens and eggs. Derbi has sold chickens and eggs for more than 10 years in the same market. 
“I am afraid to bring more chickens to the market for many reasons a week before the holiday. The buyer is more interested two or three days before the holiday, chickens are more likely to die when there is rain so it would be a disaster to have many chickens at this time,” he said.
Derbi is showing a chicken to Bizunesh to sell chickens of her choice. The price he got was within the margin of what he has been selling his chickens for: 350-400 birr before Easter arrived.
“The market is not so cheery at this time. But the situation may change as the holiday gets closer,” Derbi says.
However, there are people like Bizunesh who visited Deribe, even though most people don’t want to buy a rooster early. It was neither an improvement nor a markdown of the price of chicken during the last Ethiopian Christmas. The increase is slight at only a 50 birr margin, Deribe says.
“The holiday market always increases; none of the items has decreased once the market hikes, the prices of butter, eggs, vegetables, red pepper powder and onions have shown a slight increase,” Bizunesh says.
Deribe also sells eggs and the price of an egg is 4 birr to 5 birr similar to the price during the last Christmas holiday, whereas food items have increased. Red onion is sold for an average price of 25 birr a kilo this holiday compared to 17 birr last New Year.
Most of the major spices used for the preparation of Doro Wot -chicken stew have also shown a slight increase.
For Fikerte Dejene who sells various spices in Shoalla Gebeya, the price of most spices is stable comparing to last holiday’s market. However, Cardamom has shown an increase and it sells up to 400 Br a kilo.
Another item garlic, for its part, was sold within the range of 60 birr to 65 birr a kilo, not showing an increase within the same period.
Berbere, a powder made from red pepper, did not show any price difference from the beginning of this year either. The price of a kilo of Berbere is 120 birr.
The edible oil market is faring better. A liter of locally processed edible oil is sold within a price range of 65 to 75 birr.
One of the many cattle dealers is Dereje Kinfu has been in the business for more than seven years. There is an increase in prices compared to all holidays this year. This time it is much exaggerated, according to him.
The season, being one where the fasting season ends, as usual, is inundated with demand for meat, merchants like Atlaw says. He sells cattle between a price range of 30, 000 birr and 70,000 birr in Kara cattle market. He and his friends brought the supply of cattle from different places. The popular sources are Harar, Borena, Wolaita, Guji, Wollega, Gonder and Bahir Dar.
Kara is one of the city’s four largest cattle markets. Found in the Yeka sub city, the market holds up to 1,000 oxen brought over from various regions. There are four cattle market areas in Addis Ababa.
Ethiopia has one of the highest livestock populations in the world at about 54 million. This holiday will see more than 10,000 cattle and 20,000 goats and sheep sold in Addis Ababa, according to Solomon Bekele, marketing director of the Addis Ababa Trade Bureau.
“Early shopping gives me a better chance of buying a good product for a fair price,” Ferhiwot Debebe, a mother of two said.
“These days, the price may hike all of a sudden and I chose to buy early.”
Lamberet is another area where sheep and goats are available. Asnake Tsegaye, who went with his friends to visit this market, is wondering if he should buy sheep or goat.
“I still have not decided what to buy, it depends on the price whether I buy sheep or goat. Goats are always expensive.”
The price of goat at Lamberet market rise from 3,000 birr to 4,000birr.
To control and stabilize the price of basic commodities like, edible oil, flour, sugar and other commodities, the Addis Ababa Trade and Industry office established a task force to control illegal dealers as they are the main catalyst in the sector says Solomon Bekele.
“We have been trying to create a distribution line and market integration between regional suppliers and consumer protection shops,” he says. “We have made sure that prices won’t escalate, and we are supervising closely.”
At this scheme, the price of flour is 17 birr where as it is up to 25 birr in the market.
That the price hikes in food and food-related products are coming from the source and has been noticed by Shewaye Hailu, a retailer of butter and spices for the past decade at the famous Shola marketplace.
“We established the task force to make the price stable and made the holiday enjoyable for the inhabitants of the city,” Solomon says.
Employment and ecology
It can be debated as to whether ecological damage including climate change, or unemployment represents the most important global issue to be addressed if we are to move towards a sustainable world. Unemployment, of course, is more than an economic issue. It lies at the heart of the problem of poverty. It fuels discontent, alienation and a sense of hopelessness, which is often transformed into social unrest. To some, it remains a fundamental human right, a question not of whether economic growth can produce jobs, but a refitting of economics to assure that everyone has the right to employment.
In any case, the employment dilemma lies at the heart of the essential debate about new economics and markets. It raises a fundamental philosophical issue of economics. Should economics set as its primary goal the fulfilment of human aspiration by ensuring that every human on this earth of employable age should have a right to a job? Those in favor argue that economics needs to be reengineered to drive such a policy goal. This also means that neoclassical economics, according to which the definition of full employment requires some level of unemployment, remains fundamentally flawed.
Dr. Judith Rodin of the Brookings Institution stated that the mispricing of certain forms of capital may well distort labor capital ratios and provide a disincentive for employment-creating economic activities. Furthermore, the externalities associated with unemployment are not factored into relative input prices. A change in policy is urgently required from taxing employment as many countries do, to taxing unsustainable or nonrenewable consumption. Dr. Judith Rodin noted that placing people at the center of the new economics would increase human capital formation and reduce the discrimination of labor by taxing it.
It is true that technological substitution may reduce employment opportunities, even where overall economic efficiency is improved. The shift towards service and information-based sectors, as well as increased mechanization in historically labor intensive sectors such as agriculture, has certainly affected employment opportunity. Finding the appropriate balance between technical and labor substitution remains a challenge that now needs to factor in the full range of economic costs and benefits.
Ian Johnson, the Secretary General of the Club of Rome argued that green growth has been heralded as a “win-win” strategy by politicians and some economists. The hypothesis is that the new economy based on green growth and renewable energy is a win for the environment as well as a win for jobs. This goal, laudable as it may be, has yet to be tested through serious research. The link between growth, green or otherwise, and jobs is central to long-run sustainability and poverty reduction.
Ian Johnson further stated that the large scale global and national demographic shifts anticipated will have profound impacts on the location and demand for labor. This in turn will affect the nature of economic, political and cultural life in many countries. The porosity of borders and the mobility of labor suggest that we need to take into account the global nature of employment and the global social costs of unemployment.
An emerging theme in economics is what happens if job security cannot be assured or at least contemplated. How will we function in society where unemployment or partial employment is the expected norm? The world has become sufficiently technologically developed that it could probably produce all the material goods required with a small fraction of the population. What social and institutional structures could support such outcomes in a manner that provides for sustainable societal benefits? Can we live in a world without jobs and, if so, with what distributional, poverty and social capital consequences? I do not believe that we can.
According to Dr. Dean Wilson of Leeds University, ecology, our planet’s natural capital, is the twin global challenge because our natural capital will be both a binding issue as well as a defining issue for our future. The American ecological economist Herman Daly has suggested that while we once lived in an “empty world” with far fewer binding constraints, we are now moving towards a “full” world. Our natural capital will shape our future and it will shape where we live, how we live and what we build. Our energy systems will need to be transformed through changing the way in which we consume energy and to an almost complete turnover of our energy capital stock.
Herman Daly noted that even under conservative estimates of climate change and our desire to be below dangerous levels of emissions build-up and to manage the transition from oil as we approach peak oil, we will need to be essentially carbon-free by 2050. And who knows, perhaps even nuclear-free. Our transportation and housing systems will need to be made resilient to the vagaries of changing weather patterns. Investment in agricultural research, especially in the tropics, will need increasing in order for it to be more resilient and more productive. Our global fisheries will need to be restored to a point where we sustainably harvest the fisheries off-take. The management of our global ecology will require a dramatic increase in financial resources, but deployed effectively will provide outstanding societal and financial returns.
The twin challenges of addressing employment and ecology are daunting but essential. According to Dr. Dean Wilson, they are within the realm of possibility by 2050, but it will require a new ethos and a new economics. It will require a new understanding of prosperity, as well as a deeper and more profound understanding that social and economic equity is an investment for self-preservation, peace and security. It will require new institutions built for purpose with greater transparency, a new ethic and a new mandate: to produce the policies, goods and services that provide for a new humanity.
At the moment, we are living well beyond any reasonable limits of our planet to regenerate and change towards a more fulfilled and happier place. The evidence is clear, and the warning signs are obvious. Unless we recognize that our global economy is bounded by ecosystem limits, we will neither produce sustained growth nor sustained prosperity. As Dr. Judith Rodin strongly stressed, it is clear that if we do find jobs for those in need and if we run down our global ecology, we face a world of low resilience and high social tension. It is not a world most of us would want for our children or grandchildren.
