Shoa Bakery and Flour Factory PLC wrote a letter to the Ministry of Trade asking to increase the price of bread by 50 cents but the government has rejected their request. The company said that inflation and increasing cost of labor over the last three years has affected their bottom line.
Currently 100 grams of bread sells for 1.30 birr and 200 grams for 2.60 birr at bakeries which get flour from government subsidies.
Three years ago the government revised bread prices but some bakeries said that the devaluation of birr, which is now around 27.4 to the dollar, and increasing cost of ingredients is making life hard for them.
Thsehaye Zemuy, General Manager of Shoa Bakery told Capital that they didn’t get a response from the Ministry of Trade.
“We gave what we felt were good reasons but they did not say yes or no. Of course the price of wheat we get from the government has not increased but everything else has. Some people who don’t get wheat from the government sell the same amount of bread for three birr whereas we have to sell it for 1.30 birr. This does not take inflation into account,” he said.
Solomon Bekele, an officer from Addis Ababa Trade Bureau said that one cannot increase the price.
“The government has subsidized up to 700 birr per quintal of wheat for the selected bakeries in Addis Ababa. We have not increased the price so we can’t allow them to do so either. We were discussing the question of Shoa Bakery along with the Ministry of Trade and we agreed that it is not our plan to add to the price of bread at this time. When we believe a price increase is necessary, we will conduct a study,” he said.
Shoa Bakery has 16 Branches in Addis Ababa and employs 1,150 people. Addis Ababa has 1,462 bakeries and 39 of them get the subsidized wheat from the government.
The government sells wheat flour at 500 birr per quintal and flour companies sell the flour to the bakeries at 796.25 birr per quintal.
Shoa Bakery’s request to charge more dough gets kneaded
Finishing work for 40/60 condos to fall on beneficiaries
The Addis Ababa Saving Houses Development Enterprise (AASHDE) says that because many owners have recently demolished doors, windows, ceramic floors, kitchens and toilets of recently transferred condos that finishing works should be the responsibility of the beneficiaries.
Sources close to AASHDE told Capital that a new study will be presented to the city council and stakeholders including, the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, construction companies and urban ministers.
Condo owners are demolishing the finishing work so we want to know the exact number and then convince the stakeholders to leave the finishing work to the beneficiaries, a source from AASHDE said.
The source added that the Agency can transfer 10,000 houses a year if they don’t have to concern themselves with the finishing work.
“We are wasting so much time with finishing works, because to fix ceramic, electricity and water pipe installation takes time so it’s better to just deduct this from the price and let the new owners do it,” the source said.
The agency is spending over 150,000 birr per house to install finishing materials and so far 90 percent owners of the 972 houses recently transferred have replaced the finishing materials.
AASHDE engineers said that over 130 million birr in ceramic and other materials have been demolished at Crown and Senga Tera sites recently.
Beneficiaries often say that the finishing materials are low quality.
In related news 40/60 condos shops tenders have not gotten as many bidders as expected. Initially the Agency planned on attracting 20,000 bidders but only 4,000 people have bought the document for the tender even though the closing time has been extended twice.
So far banks and insurance companies have purchased the document to open branches at the sites. The winners of the tender will be announced on March 27.
This first tender aims to sell 372 condo shops built under the 40/60 scheme. They plan to sell them at a floor price of 19,634 birr per square meter.
The shops are located in Senga Terra and Crown sites on the ground, first and second floors. They are from 62 to 120 square meters and have communal toilets, marble stairs and emergency exit doors.
A water tanker which can hold 300 liters, a common satellite antenna, an electric and telecommunication line are also being installed in the shops.
Fire accidents kill over 137 in Addis, decrease slightly during first half year
Between last July and this January, 137 people were killed in fires, floods or bridge slides and over 40 million birr in property was damaged. There were 188 total incidents and 80 percent of them were fires.
There has been a slight decrease in the number of fires most of which are caused by candles, electric wires, stoves and cylinders and burned 42 homes causing six million birr in damages. Bole, Kolfe, Akaki sub cities have the most fires at 24, 18 and 13 respectively. Akaki sub city suffered a 22 million birr loss in damages from fire. Addis Ketema sub city saw 9 accidents over the first half of the fiscal year causing 32 million birr of damage to six manufacturing companies and seven trucks.
A recent study showed that 20 places in the metro region are susceptible to flooding and relocation of homes was recommended.
Many fires are caused by electrical wiring. Older homes are particularly susceptible, as they were not wired for years. Many homes that were built in the 50′s and 70′s have aluminum wiring that gets very hot and increases the chance of fire. Heating is another major cause of residential fire accidents. This is especially true for people in the outskirts of Addis Ababa who use wood for cooking.
With the eight branches, the Agency reaches 10 Districts that cover 116 woredas. Of the 463 accidents recorded in Addis Ababa last year, the majority, 368, were caused by fire. The Agency said that an additional 125 hydrants will be installed during the 2017/18 fiscal year. Currently, there are four hydrants per 10 square meters in the city.
The eighty-year-old Agency is limited to eight stations, which were previously the only spots where water could be refilled by fire fighters.
There are currently 1,200 staff, 33 ambulances, three sky lift ladders and eight water trucks. The trucks have a capacity to hold 7,000 liters of water.
Foreign Affairs Ministry addresses US visit, contraband, GERD, port
By Tesfaye Getnet
The firing of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson just days after his visit to Ethiopia doesn’t lessen the value of the recent meeting, Meles Alem, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said during a press conference in which he went over many pressing topics.
“Rex Tillerson, did not come to Ethiopia for personal business, he was representing the US. The discussions were about strengthening the political and economic ties between the US and Ethiopia. People come and go but the relationship between Ethiopia and the US will continue as it has for more than a century,” he said.
Contraband trade and illegal migration were something he wanted to emphasize as he lauded the 28th Ethiopia Djibouti Joint border commission held in Semra, Afar last week which passed many agreements to address these two challenges.
“The two countries are connected by road and railway at a cost of over USD 15 billion. This has increased business and made traveling easer but there is a challenge in controlling illegal trade along the border and preventing migrants from crossing to the Middle East which is unsafe so the agreement will help alleviate these problems,” he said.
He went over a new plan by Ethiopia to use a port in addition to Djibouti.
“We are working on using Berbera Port in a way that respects the legal process and we will search for another port that will not affect our access to the Djibouti port. Djibouti will be our main port for our imports like in the past.’’
Recently the Dubai based logistics giant DP World and the government of Ethiopia officially disclosed Ethiopia’s 19 percent stake buyout of the Berbera Port, when the government of Somaliland and DP World concluded a management deal last year.
The Dubai Company operating a port in Djibouti, agreed with Somaliland to manage the operation of Berbera Port, one of the oldest ports in the region.
Regarding the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam the spokesperson said a meeting will be held in Khartoum in three weeks with the technical committee.
“The meeting was supposed to be held in February but it was postponed until next month. At that time we will present the documents to the leaders of Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt about the flowing and filling of the dam…there is no negotiation with Egypt over the dam, only a discussion, we can’t negotiate about the dam because 65 million people are out of electricity and we need to develop our country.”
