Left to rot on the reserve bench former Ethiopia Bunna and national team mid fielder Elias Mamo parted ways with defending champion Jimma AbaJifar while former Sehul-Shere that now holds mid fielder Henok Getahnu landed a two-year contract with Ethiopia Bunna.
Frustrated for being forgotten, with only seven starts from 19 Premier League matches under Coach Zemariam W/Giorgis, Elias Mamo left AbaJifar in mutual agreement. Once considered an upcoming play maker orchestrating the mid field with Saint George, Elias played for Ethiopia NegedBank and Ethiopia Bunna before he joined the champions at the start of the current season. Blamed for being overweight and lack of inspiration, Elias was said to be not on good terms with Coach Zemaraim W/Giorgis and Technical Director Worku Dergeba therefore he left the club half way through his contract. Sources close to Elias told Capital the mid fielder is already in touch with other teams at the upper tier.
In other news Ethiopia Bunna appears to have discovered the right player to tackle the defensive mid fielder problem signing Henok who left Sehul-Shere in mid season after a mutual agreement. The former Adama and Jimma AbaJifar mid fielder had a good season start with Sehul but when some started pointing fingers at the team’s poor result, Henok decided to part with the team only to put pen to paper with Ethiopia Bunna in less than a month. The tall and heavy set Henok is expected to be the right answer for Didier Gomes’ who is currently under pressure from club supporters.
Elias leaves AbaJifar, Henok Joins Ethiopia Bunna
Miracle performer Alazar; popular choice at Debub Police
Fair Play award winner Gebrekristos Birara’s appointment in replacement of miracle performer with Premier League debutant Debub Police care taker Coach Alazar Melese left supporters in disappointment.
A single win and two draws in the past thirteen matches, Debub Police and Zelalem Shiferaw parted ways in mutual agreement therefore Alazar appointed stop-gap Coach until the end of the first round. But two wins out of two and Debub Police a step up the ladder to 14th in the table with 11 points, many got convinced that young Alazar to stay longer.
But to supporters’ surprise Dilla sacked Coach Gebrekristos Birara’s appointment at relegation struggler Debub Police calleda for disappointment from club supporters. Care taker Coach Alazar made a miracle winning two tricky matches a shocking 2-1 away win over Ethiopia Bunna and devastating defending champions AbaJifar to 6-1 score line. That is more than the total points in their 13 matches therefore supporters disappointment appeared to be sound for Gebrekristos’s recent record shows that he got sacked for poor results with Dilla while Alazar is an overnight hero slaying two giants.
With all variables stayed constant and the credit of success all goes to Alazar, supporters are in demand of long term contract to him. Gebrekristos’ huge credit of a real sportsmanship gesture of fair play that is saying no to a goal mistakenly given by the referee in favor of his side is something huge to appreciate. But handing the hot seat just for the sake of Fair Play appears to be illogical and likely to back fire soon if things in particular managing the players go wrong to Gebrekristos.
Fifty years in Ethiopia
Carsten Spohr has been Chairman of the Executive Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG
Property tax for business centers proposed
The Ministry of Finance and Economy has drafted a property tax proposal, which is expected to be brought to the Council of Ministers by the end of this fiscal year, in order to collect more revenue from business hub areas.
Sources told Capital that a property tax between 0.5 percent and 2 percent will be levied on the businesses. For a long time, property income taxation has been seen as neglected by Ethiopia’s tax authority.
According sources close to the issue if the draft is endorsed by Parliament the new property tax law will enhance local revenue mobilization by increasing the local tax base and addressing tax administration weaknesses identified at the local level and in the long run the tax will be expected to cover at least 60 percent of the municipality budget.
“Business hub areas benefit from the better infrastructure that surrounds their business. If you go to Bole, the roads are better, the sewerage system is better. However, the building owners pay nothing to build the infrastructure. Receiving money from the business shops will help renovate, maintain and construct roads, street lights and drainage systems” a source told Capital.
The property tax money will be administered by urban cities.
“The Property tax will not be based on assumptions, mere conclusion of property value by individuals, old records and non-professional opinions among other means but it will be based on property values obtained from registered estate surveyors and certificates of valuation”, the source added.
The latest IMF report stated that Ethiopia has made progress mobilizing domestic revenue since the mid-1990s, but still lags countries in the region and other low income countries (LICs). “The tax-to-GDP ratio rose from 8.6 percent in 2008/09 to 12.7 percent in 2014/15, but it has declined since then to 11.1 percent in 2017/18,” it said. In the past budget year, the government wanted to collect 200 billion birr, but the actual performance was actually ¼ of the target, which is a significant reduction compared with the recent trend in the tax collation and target achievement ratio.
Since the beginning of the first Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) the government has expressed its eagerness to expand the revenue from tax in line with the rate of the GDP. It has also show an improvement in the first GTP even though the rate is under the projection. At the heyday of tax collection in 2014/15, which was the end of GTP I, the revenue authority body which at the time was the Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority, collected 12.7 percent of the GDP. This is lower than peer economies and countries in the east Africa region.
