A draft regulation would establish a director level department at the Ministry of Mines to solely control and supervise the distribution and illegal trade of petroleum.
If the draft regulation is approved by the Council of Ministers a truck that unloads benzene or kerosene at the wrong destination will be automatically confiscated and the petroleum in the truck will be sold and the money will be taken by the government.
A source at the trade office told Capital that the regulation will help fight petroleum contraband which is currently widespread in the country. 
“The main problem is there is not a serious department in the trade bureau solely responsible for supervising petroleum. The idea is allow each region and administration to have a department that works on this. They will easily be able to identify the specific trucks assigned to the specific depot.”
However, some fear the new regulation may violate the rights of oil companies.
“We understand the government’s concern but what if a gas station has not paid its last debt of gas, then we will be in difficult situation unloading another tank of gas for it. This will not allow us to have them unload the gas at another station.”
The oil companies are regulated by the three institutions directly and by many other government bodies indirectly, and which many industry insiders agree to be the main reason for many problems that have been occurring for a long time.
Oil companies agree that there is no efficient service in the Djibouti depot where about four days will be consumed for one vehicle to load the oil. Ethiopia uses Sudan and Djibouti depots to distribute its four types of oil but the Sudanese one takes a very small amount.
National Oil Company (NOC), Yetebaberut Petroleum, Total, and Oil Libya take the highest share of oil distribution in Ethiopia.
Ministry of Mines to oversee oil distribution
NBE receiving paltry gold deposits
Widespread contraband trade, political instability in gold mining regions, and a need for a better system to stop corruption are being blamed for a decreasing amount of gold going into the National Bank of Ethiopia’s reserve (NBE).
NBE, which has branches in Gold Mining regions, now receives less than 50 grams of gold per day. That amount was 10 to 25 KG a year ago. The bank also received less than USD 90 million in the last fiscal year but some years ago that figure was USD 600 million.
The Bank’s gold buying branches in Shire, Dema, Gambela, Mizan Tepi, Pawi, Assosa, Hawassa, and Shakiso sometimes go two or three days a week without a transaction.
The sector currently is led by traditional miners. Major companies including MIDROC have stopped extracting gold because of political instability in the areas they are operating.
The gold was extracted and explored by 170 small companies. They were PLC licensed and around 50 percent of these firms are foreign companies, while 25 percent of them are joint ventures between local and foreign businesses and the remaining are local enterprises.
According to Ministry of Mines and Energy illegal gold trading helps some businesspeople move their money out of the country and some government employees are also collaborating with these illegal actors.
Sudan, Kenya, Djibouti and Somalia are the destinations for the gold which illegally passes the country’s borders.
The Ministry is worried about the problem. They wrote a letter to the PM to host a meeting and discuss the matter with gold and petroleum stakeholders.
The Ministry’s Head of Communications, Micheal Mengesha, said “we can’t continue like this, the oil and gold market is in big trouble. As a ministry we are restructuring our office to add more workers to fill our deficit, but the discussion with the PM is very necessary to go further.’’
“The security system should be tightened to protect miners in the mining areas, big companies should return to their work and the black market must be controlled soon; we must work together’’ he added.
A source at the National Bank told Capital that the Ministry should add more workers in the mining areas to control the system.
“The ministry and the regions are very reluctant to assign the right staff in the mining areas but if you don’t have enough resources, you can’t stop crime’’ the source added.
Over 1.5 million artisanal miners are working in the country.
The gold collected from artisanal miners is processed by NBE and then sent to Switzerland for refining to be sold on the global market.
Former top officials arrested
Former top government officials, Bereket Simon and Tadesse Kassa appeared at the Amhara Regional State Court, under suspicion of wasting USD 90 million. The charge is damaging the public’s interest.
A 51 percent share of Dashen Brewery was sold to Duet Investment Group, a UK company, in 2012 for USD 90 million. Prosecutors say this was lost from the account of the subsidiary TIRET.
At the moment of the transaction, the two suspects were top officials both at the brewery and the conglomerate, according to regional prosecutors. Bereket Simon was a board chairman of Tiret Corporate and Tadesse was a CEO of the conglomerate. Both were members of the board of the brewery, claimed the prosecutor.
Prosecutors requested more time for further investigation of the brewery and the conglomerate.
Tiret, which was established in 1995 with 26.1 million birr capital, has its headquarters in Addis Ababa. This brought the jurisdiction into question.
Prosecutors opposed this because the wasted money is in Amhara regional state where the company is located, and its employees are.
The endowment was established with the funds raised from the former Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM) and 25 other founding members and it has various companies under its umbrella including Kombolcha Textile Company, Ambasel Trading House Plc, Belesa Logistics and Transit, Zeleke Agricultural Mechanization Plc and Tikur Abay Transport Plc.
The suspects said they should be granted bail because of their health condition and concerns about security in the prison that they are being kept. Berket stated that he was insulted by youth while being investigated and added that he has a mistrust in the rule of law in the Amhara Regional State. He also asked why their case was not seen on January 24, 2019, stating that they were told they would appear.
Prosecutors responded that case was not seen on Thursday as the file was not presented to the court.
Bereket Simon was a former communications minister and a top government official on various boards including the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia.
The court has reviewed the investigation file of the prosecutors and after hearing the two parties adjourned the case until February 8, 2019, while ordering the security to be tight in the prison the suspects are kept in.
DAVOS VS. DEPLORABLES
The countries of the rich are undergoing some interesting upheavals. Not long ago, OECD (or rich countries) were considered standard bearers of development and by implication wellbeing. After the last major crisis of the global economic system, which goes by the common name of Global Financial Crisis (GFC), inequality between citizens (of a given country in the OECD) rose sharply. Such an unprecedented level of polarization within and between the rich countries has never been witnessed in modern times. Even the heady days of the 1920s were not as polarized economically as today. Here are some numbers from OXFAM illustrating the prevailing reality between the Davos boys and the Deplorable. A year and half ago 43 individuals had more wealth than half of the world’s population (3.8 billion people). Today it is no more 43, but rather 26. In 2018, half of the world’s poor lost 11% of their wealth, while in 2017, 82% of the annually accrued global wealth went only to the top 1%!
The deplorable in the western countries are losing ground and are trying to lose themselves, in stuff that are not healthy. Opioid death is now higher than death from auto accidents in the USA. Life expectancy amongst the middle class white male in American is declining! Family formation is also on a downward spiral, in almost all the rich countries of the world. About half of working Americans (48%) make only $30,000 per year, which cannot be considered a living wage. Pension funds are also in serious trouble. Meeting their obligations to pensioners in OECD/USA has become increasingly difficult. Nonetheless, many pensioners are completely oblivious to this impending life-changing crisis. So far, all kinds of gimmicks were/are implemented to hide the crisis afflicting almost all states of the union in the US. One way or the other, the pension crisis is going to implode. These and other issues are bound to bring the sheeple (human mass) in the so-called rich countries of the world system to the streets. The ‘yellow vests’ in France might well be the precursor of things to come!
After the 2008 financial crisis inequality and polarization accelerated across the globe. The parasitic financial cabals of the world system who run the economic show with their paid politicos, rigged the global system after 2008. The result, the majority actually lost big time, while the very few (less than 1%) prospered. After 2008, crony capitalism became the modus operandi of the system from north to south, from Africa to South America, etc. Ill-gotten wealth and unearned income were celebrated, while hard work was/is maligned. Developing countries like Ethiopia, willy-nilly endorsed such a distorted form of capitalism, where tenderpreneurship, outright embezzlement and all sorts of criminal activities are/were non-chalantly accepted by the ruling elites. The formal state was there only to hoodwink the gullible sheeple into thinking that its voices actually matter. But the naked truth was/is, the ‘Mafiosi States’/Gangsterism became the real governing entity all over Africa and helped implement perverted policies across the continent. The new dictum of the ‘Mafiosi State’ became; wealth is to be stolen not acquired through work and innovation. Thanks to these regimes, extreme poverty is on the increase in Sub-Sahara Africa, yet again. If truth be told, such distortions in Africa have yet to solicit vigorous reactions from the disgruntled sheeple! What we are witnessing on the streets of Zimbabwe, Tunisia, The Sudan, etc. might well become regular occurrences on our continent! Here are more numbers from OXFAM showing the deep divide between the Davos clan and the Deplorable.
‘Mukesh Ambani ranks 19th in the Forbes 2018 billionaire list and is the richest Indian. His residence in Mumbai, a towering 570-foot building, is worth $1bn and is the most expensive private house in the world. 6 Pratima, who lives in a slum in Patna, eastern India, lost both her twins due to delays and scarce resources in her nearest clinic. Poor women like Pratima have to give birth without proper maternal healthcare, leaving them vulnerable to complications, neglect and stillbirth as a result.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is the richest man in the world, with a fortune of $112bn on the 2018 Forbes list. Just 1% of his total wealth is the equivalent of almost the whole health budget of Ethiopia, a country of 105 million people. He recently said that he has decided to invest his fortune in space travel, as he can’t think of anything else to spend his money on.
Zay is a shrimp processing worker in Thailand. The shrimp Zay peels is supplied to large retailers like Whole Foods supermarkets, now owned by parent company, Amazon. At the end of a shift, the exhaustion Zay feels after peeling shrimp for 12 or 13 hours can leave him almost immobile. Zay is lucky if he earns more than $15 in a day.’
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic, it is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness – and if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now, as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself, a marvelous victory.” Howard Zinn. Good Day!
