The Federal Housing Corporation recently changed their rental prices, setting a floor of 509 birr per square meter at the shops and offices it rents.
Now tenants are asking the Corporation to revise its prices and lower the rent to 71.50 birr per square meter.
Tenants made this argument at the meeting last Wednesday at Global Hotel. They pointed to an eight year old study conducted by the Corporation.
They argued that the Corporation is not taking into account a realistic view of the economy and market. 
A woman who came from US doing business with her father in Piassa said she will shut her shops if the Corporation does not revise the new price.
“They asked us to pay 70,000 birr per month but we can’t make a profit at this price, for me it is not a problem. I can return to the US to work but what about the 43 workers who have built their lives on our company’s work,” she said.
Other tenants said the corporation’s new price will aggravate rental prices of private shops across the city.
“After setting the new price some private shops in the city have started increasing rental prices which will ultimately hurt consumer’s pockets. The corporation should have looked at the impact of the new prices before they set them,” a young tenant said at the meeting
Abrham Arega who is the member of the tenants’ committee said the corporation set different prices on the same offices in a building which demonstrates that the price increases were not properly studied.
Under the new revision 477 shops are set to pay 1,000 birr per month, 3,078 shops between 1,000 up to 2,000 birr, 447 shops between 20,000 to 30,000, three shops from 200,000 up to 300,000 birr and two buildings will pay 400,000 birr per month.
The corporation did not make any price revision for business shops in the last 40 years.
Before the new revision 3,880 of the shops were paying 65 birr per square meter and 2,052 shops were paying below 10 birr for a square meter. Surprisingly the rental fee of another 279 shops was below one birr per square meter.
The Corporation recently announced that instead of applying their new rental prices at all at once, tenants will pay 35 percent of the new prices the first year, the second year they will pay 70 percent and the third year they will pay the full revised price.
Rent is too high, FCH tenants argue
Major tax conference not attended by govt
The organizers of the high level conference on taxation issues are disappointed by the absence of relevant government representatives in what is a priority agenda for the country.
The conference with the title: ‘challenges and solutions of taxation for promoting business related investment and four national building in Ethiopia: politics, law and practices’ held on Friday January 25 at Sapphire Addis Hotel organized by Afro-Global Consultancy Services (AGS), a recently formed organization to work on tax, finance and related issues, in collaboration with public and private organizations including the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation (IBFD), based in Amsterdam.
During the full day event several papers focused on laws and policies of the taxation system, macro economics, fiscal, monetary policy, and identifying and tackling challenges that the country faces regarding taxes. It also featured inclusive panel discussions.
Even though the high level event attracted several participants the organizers expressed their disappointment because of the absence of several top government officials.
Fisseha-Tsion Menghistu (Prof), President and CEO of AGS, said that the expected individuals did not appear at the event, but the event is crucial and timely for the country.
Fisseha-Tsion, who has a half a century of experience in tax, investment and finance, said that the government should consider these kinds of issues to be a priority;
“I don’t want to accuse them for now but they need to give attention and support the sector for the future,” he told Capital.
“The government needs to consult from Ethiopian scholars with wide expertise, who are independent and working for their country. The government is expected to work closely with us,” he claimed.
He complained that the top officials at the government apparatuses do not know their future agenda. “Some of them were willing to participate at our event but they have gone on other sudden meetings,” he added.
“The meeting that the Prime Minister strongly stated does not interfere with relevant day to day office work is not respected,” he criticized.
The conference mainly targeted to strengthen the effort and campaign of the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Revenue to expand the tax collection.
During the last decade the country has registered double digit growth, but the tax to GDP ratio is still very low.
“The conference targets to discuss and analyze if tax collection challenges are related with political, policy, administration, law or implementation,” the founder of AGC said.
“The aim of our consultancy firm is to give more support and to render high quality professional services to the government, the business communities, the NGOs; finance and development institutions as well as to the general public,” the founder said. AGS has ten PhD level highly experienced professionals on micro economic policy, good governance, corporate responsibility, finance and other sectors.
“We organized this event not for profit, but with a goal of contributing to our country,” Fisseha-Tsion said.
“We did not get financial support from the government to host this event, which is supposed to be the responsibility of the government,” he added.
The country has a goal of expanding the tax to GDP ratio to reach 17 percent by the end of the coming fiscal year, while the actual achievement is very poor.
Figures indicated that the country’s tax GDP ratio is lower than other regional countries and stands at about 12 percent and went down to 10.7 percent in the past year compared with the preceding year, which was below 13 percent.
The paper was presented on the day by Dr. Lemma Gudissa stated that the reduction may be related with poor collection, updating the tax policy or the private sector.
“Comparing to inflation the tax collection growth rate it is negative,” Lemma said.
Supreme Court reverses decision granting bail for Esayas Dagnew
The Federal Supreme Court has reversed the Federal High court’s ruling to grant bail for Essays Dagnew on January 22, 2019. Police were also granted ten more days to investigate the former Ethio Telecom high ranking official.
Essayas was accused of causing damage to the public interest by awarding a purchase for the military complex, Metals and Engineering Corporation (MeTEC), using his affiliation with his brother who was the former CEO of the MeTEC, Major General Kinfe Dagnew.
After the Adjudicative Court the High Court granted bail for the suspect at 200,000-birr police appealed to the Appellate Court.
Re-do of BPR for Addis Ababa City Administration employees
A 109 member team is in Adama restructuring the position of city workers in the new Business Process Reengineering (BPR) management project geared towards instituting a better work culture, greater productivity and improved customer service delivery.
The re-do is being conducted after city departments were cut from 117 to 68.
Under BPR 109,000 city workers will be assigned jobs according to their education and work experience. A source in the Administration told Capital that the Adama team will deliver their findings to the Vice Mayor, Takele Uma and the Addis Ababa City Public Service and Human Resource Development Bureau in order to implement BPR.
“The city is folding some of its institutions so there is overlapping of positions and duplication of work so rearranging positions is vital,” a city employee said.
The city has instituted a hiring freeze for the last four months, but the Vice Mayor said no one would lose their job. Instead they will be reassigned to positions they are qualified for. After BPR is implemented the hiring freeze will be lifted.
Under former Mayor Kuma Demksa the city implemented BPR and restructured many positions.
Since 1994, the government of Ethiopia has embarked on reforming its civil service organizations with the objective of improving the public sector service delivery system. The government sponsored many management training programs to enhance the capacities of civil service employees and to implement Result Based Performance Management System in all of its civil service organizations. Though this brought some improvements in the performance of some civil service organizations, it required great effort to achieve the benefits obtained. Since 2004, the government has also endorsed Business Process Reengineering (BPR) as a foundation for strengthening Result Based Performance Management System in the Civil Service. Scientific Management, Systems Theory and Operations Management are the theoretical and methodological foundations of BPR. For this reason, most corporations used BPR as a transformation tool during the 1980s and 1990s. However, the characteristics of government organizations are different from corporate organizations. These distinguishing features constrain government organizations from emulating the BPR experiences of corporate ones.
