By Eyasu Zeakarias

Reports reveal that a capital of 6.1 billion dollars may fill the 80 percent gap in the market affecting micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Ethiopia

The criteria set depicted that financial institutions need to provide guarantees and loans, and lack of such results to the flop of most MSMEs. Second to the bottleneck that the MSMEs faced was the lack of financial education and awareness of savings and credit management, as well as the lack of access to market connections and places.   

To alleviate the burden, the Canadian-based Mastercard Foundation has set a goal of creating job opportunities for 30 million young people by 2023 through the “Young Africa Works Strategy” launched in Africa in 2018.

As the foundation disclosed, since 2019 when they started this strategy in Ethiopia alone, they enabled 1.27 million youths to get job opportunities by coordinating with partner organizations.

According to Samuel Yalew, Ethiopian Country Director of Mastercard Foundation, since 2019, they have been working together with 53 organizations working in tax, manufacturing, tourism, agriculture and digital technology priority sectors.

According to the Ethiopian 2021 Labor Force and Migration survey, the country’s unemployment rate was eight percent as of August 2021. The national unemployment rate for women, 11.7 percent, was more than double that of men 5.0 percent. Youth unemployment, among those aged 15-29, was 7.7 percent. Urban unemployment 17.9 percent was significantly higher than rural unemployment.

The International Labor Organization assessment report in 2022 estimated that more than two million young people enter the labor market every year, yet the economy is unable to meet the demand.

The second round of the MasterCard Foundation Young Africa Works Strategy commitment to Action: Access to Inclusive and Affordable Finance to Stimulate Job Creation was held at the Ethiopian Partners annual Learning Summit on December 5, 2023.

At the event, job creation was also linked to support gender equality and economic growth.

These companies have been working together for more than two years and have provided favorable conditions to harbor the job creation industry.

According to Samuel, 75 percent of the foundation’s partners are African organizations that are committed to solving basic problems while supporting solutions.

This year’s summit brought together around 200 participants and created the opportunity for policy and decision-makers to engage in an insightful environment that stimulates significant steps to build stakeholder-preneurship and job placement.

Ethio Telecom signs a memorandum of understanding with the Oromia National Regional State and Sheger City Administration to deploy the state-of-the-art smart solutions and digital services, ushering in a new era of modernized and digitized service delivery.

According to the telecommunications firm, the agreement with the Oromia National Regional State, will have a substantial impact across diverse sectors, ranging from local administrative units to regional administrative organs, thereby streaming service delivery processes and leading to greater satisfaction with service provision.

“This agreement will further play a pivotal role in digitalizing the Region’s administrative offices operations with the deployment of digital infrastructures that will enhance citizens’ convenience and experience. Particularly, making an agreement to collect municipal income tax, rental income tax and investment income tax payments and other service payments via telebirr is the cornerstone of this agreement,” the firm underlined in its presser.

Similarly, the company set forth an agreement with the Sheger City Administration Mayor’s Office to deploy a Wide Area Network (WAN) infrastructure that will help easily integrate various bureaus and service rendering offices. The agreement also included the installation of fiber optic cables for CCTV cameras, the construction of a control room for the cameras and the provision of ongoing technical support.

By our staff reporter

The sole deep sea vessel operator in Africa, Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics (ESL), reels in 13 billion birr in the first quarter of the fiscal year.

In contrast to the revenue from July to September, to that of a year ago, there has been a notable increase of a quarter.

The public enterprise, which is under the Ethiopian Investment Holding (EIH), a sovereign wealth fund, revealed in a statement at parliament’s Public Enterprises Standing Committee that its revenue increased by 26 percent during the first quarter of the 2023/24 budget year, which began in July.

Additionally, the performance has surpassed projections to attain 148 percent of the goal established for the time frame. Similarly, the logistics giant’s earnings before taxes for the specified time was over 1.9 billion birr, a 61 percent increase over the same period, from a year ago.  

In terms of operation, ESL has successfully handled over 2.1 million metric tons of goods, about twice as much as it had anticipated to do so in that time frame.

In comparison to the same period last year, the amount handled by the operation has increased by 51 percent.

In the first three months over 1.2 million tonnes of cargo have been managed by the logistic company.  The amount of shipping service that ESL has transported on its own, as well as slot carrier and charter, has surpassed the goal by 143 percent and by 81 percent over the previous year.

Additionally, 29,557 twenty-foot containers that were transported from Djibouti to Ethiopia were handled by ESL, the only multimodal transport provider.

On its way to achieving 112 percent of its goal, it also enlarged its foothold by one third in contrast to the same period of the 2022/2023 budget year.

The CEO of the holdings company, Abdurehman Eid Tahir, stated on Wednesday, December 6, at a meeting with the Public Enterprises Standing Committee and the EIH leadership that the firm had over eight billion birr in accrued income, which is meant to be paid by the government or public companies.

“We are working to settle the accrued amount that includes foreign currency,” he stated. ESL has set a goal of securing over 6.7 billion birr profit before tax for the budget year that ends in June 2024. This is an increase of 10.5 percent from the budget year 2022/23.

For the 2022–2023 budget year, ESL received 42.73 billion birr from its vessel, inland, freight forwarding, port, and terminal services—which was more than 90 percent of the objective from its prediction of 47.29 billion birr.

The corporation outperformed its own projections for the year by 112 percent, achieving a profit of nearly six billion birr.

The company aims to increase its capital to 90 billion birr from the existing over 20 billion birr. The CEO of ESL, Berisso Amallo, recently informed Capital that the capital increase will be presented to the board upon completion of the audit work in the near future.

When the previous budget year came to a close, it can be recalled that ESL, listed the largest vessel it had ever owned.

Following the dismissal of founding President Henock Kebede, the board of directors of Amhara Bank, which is the newest and financially strongest bank, has appointed Chanyalew Demissie as the interim head of the bank.

A letter dated Friday, December 8, signed by Board Chairperson Melaku Fenta, stated that Chanyalew, who had joined the bank approximately a year and a half ago as Chief Banking Operation Officer, had been assigned to this position.

On the same day, Henok Kebede, the bank’s founding president, was fired by the board, and Chief Service Officer Kinde Abebe was also dismissed by the bank’s upper management. The letter of dismissal attributed the former executives’ inadequate income and mismanagement of the bank’s operations as the reasons for their termination.

Additionally, the letter mentioned that the bank reported a loss of 460 million birr in the 2022/2023 fiscal year, contrary to the projected profit of 306 million birr. Amhara Bank, which has over 191,000 shareholders, a paid-up capital of 5.8 billion birr, and a subscribed capital of 7.9 billion birr, is scheduled to launch in the middle of 2022. With such a large number of shareholders, it is the largest share corporation to date.