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.
Supreme Court reverses decision granting bail for Esayas Dagnew
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.
Coffee Break Export value, volume of Ethiopia’s cash crop declines
Coffee, Ethiopia’s leading export earning commodity, saw its export volume and value decline during the first half of the fiscal year. This reverses a trend that has taken place over the past few years.
The Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority’s (ECTA) report indicated that the exported volume of coffee in the first six months of the budget year, which runs from July 8 to January 8, stood at 103,445 tons.
This is a decrease of over 28 thousand tons compared with the target. In terms of percentage the performance is about 78 percent of the target.
The report indicated that the volume has also shrunk by 4,194 tons or close to four percentage points when compared with the similar period of the 2017/18 budget year. During the stated period the authority planned for coffee exports to earn USD 475 million. Instead they only brought in 70 percent of that amount or USD 334 million.
The revenue also declined when compared with the first six months of last year by USD 49 million or 12.5 percent.
In recent history, export earnings and volume would grow every year so this is unexpected.
November is part of the bean harvest season but that month experienced the lowest performance in both value and volume.
The authority’s six-month report which was 31 pages long indicated that the value earned in August met 87.5 percent of the target. During that same month, the volume was the highest, meeting 93 percent of the target. The November performance was 62 and 51 percentage points of the target by volume and value respectively.
Saudi has stood as the top destination taking 21 percent of the total volume and 18 percent of the revenue, while Germany followed at 16 and 14 percent of the shares by volume and value in the stated six months. Japan took third place at 12 percent and the US, Belgium, South Korea, Italy, Sudan, Australia and France were four through ten respectively.
The stated ten countries consumed 84 percent of Ethiopian coffee in the past six months and contributed to 81 percent of the revenue from USD 334 million of total earnings. The report indicated that in the top ten destinations consumption has declined by four percent compared with a year ago and the revenue went down by 14 percent.
The US purchased 31 percent less coffee during this period which contributed to a decline in revenue by 29 percent.
The consumption of Germany, which is also a hub of Ethiopian coffee for the region and one of the top buyers of Ethiopian coffee, went down by 25 percent of volume and 29 percent by revenue. Volume exported to France has also declined by 18 percent which contributed to a value drop of 34 percent, while Italy’s consumption also was reduced by three percent of volume and 17 percent in value.
The consumption of the other major destinations Japan and Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Australia has increased significantly despite the revenue from Saudi declining by four percent.
Kerchanshe Trading Plc, Tracon Trading Plc and Adem Kedir Haji (Hora Trading) were the three top exporting companies respectively during the stated period. Mulege, a prominent coffee exporter, Abbahawa Trading Plc, Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative, Sidama, Coffee Farmers Union, Arfasa Trading, SA Bageresh, and Ethiopian Trading Business Corporate ranked four through ten respectively on the top exporter’s list. In the past six months, 278 coffee exporters were engaged in the coffee export business, according to the report.
The ten exporters exported 40 thousand tons of coffee in total and earned USD 126 million which took up 39 percent and 38 percent of the share respectively from the total export and earnings for the period, while top 20 exporters have exported and earned over half of the total trading.
The report indicated that the top 20 exporters have contributed 54 percent of the value and volume of the total coffee business.
The minority, 64 percent or 178 exporters, took only 9 percent in volume and 8 percent of value. One of the challenges coffee is facing is the growing number of new exporters, attempting to get hard currency as opposed to trading it for traditional business reasons.
The new exporters have created confusion in the coffee sector and escalated the price of the product locally while exporting it at a lower price just to get foreign currency to feed their original importing business.
The well organized report of ECTA has also compared the international coffee price with the first six months of the current budget year with the same period of the last budget year.
The table contrasts the half year monthly trading of the New York Coffee Exchange with the past budget year and it showed that the price has declined for the current budget year significantly.
For instance, in July 2017 a ton of coffee was traded at USD 4,199, while it was USD 3,664 in July 2018 which is a 16 percent decrease.
On the international market on average in the last six months the price of coffee has declined from 24 percent to 9 percent compared with the six months of the past budget year.
The authority, which also follows the spice sector also stated that in the first six months close to USD five million was secured from export which is half of the target.
The other product that ECTA follows is tea. During the stated period, 984 tons of tea was exported and earned USD 1.6 million which is about half of the target.
CCD boss given a month to hand over homes
Messele Haile (PhD), the founder of Country Club Developers (CCD), appeared before the Federal High Court’s 6th Civil Bench on January 14, 2019. He was summoned to testify in a case regarding delayed homes that the court had previously ordered be finished.
Messele told the court that he is trying his best to hand over the houses but that he needed three more months to finish installation work. Messle’s excuse for the current delay is ordering material to complete the homes from abroad as a package deal along with many other items.
Lawyers for the six plaintiffs refused the defendant’s request, stating that enough time had been given. They also demanded he be detained until he complies with the court order.
CCD was taken to the Federal High Court to execute a ruling given in their favor on January 1. In their initial agreement, the homes which lay on 1,000sqm, would be handed over within 18 months. After ten years of court battles the applicants accepted the final ruling and agreed amicably that the real estate company should deliver the houses within 16 months, granting 4 additional months for the import process. However the 16 months passed and then nine more months and still no homes appeared. So at that point the creditors applied to the court to force the execution.
CCD was also fined for failure to deliver the homes on time. They were ordered to pay 10 percent of the initial contract.
The applicants also sued for 30,000 birr for every month of delay in damages. This amounts to over one million Birr.
The judge granted just one more month for the developer to hand over the homes. The case was adjourned until February 14.
