The Ministry of Mines calls upon Afar and Oromia regions and the Addis Ababa city administration to sell old Ethio Djibouti railway metals for provision of input to metal factories following the Finance Ministry’s decision to vend of scrap metals, used vehicles and machineries to steel producers through legal channel.
The Mine’s Ministry announced that government through the Ethiopian Investment Holding is working on profitable options either to merge metal factories in the country or to support them as they are now.
“Factories are working on only 17-19 percent of their capacity. There are many reasons for this, one of which is the shortage of input to which this scheme will help us to provide input. The inputs gathered can sustain the metal industry for up to 2 years and once collected they will be distributed to factories based on their production capacity,” said Takele Uma, Mines Minister during a joint press conference with the federal Public Procurement and Property Authority.
“The metal industry is huge. Factories which we have in our country are lagging behind in their production, capacity and also technology. Unless the government takes on the initiative to lead the industry it is difficult to develop the sector,” emphasized Takele, adding, “Based on the decision made by the Prime Minister, the Ethiopian Investment Holding is conducting assessment of cooperation with the factories and also international consultant.”
Takele’s Ministry has also called on governmental and private institutions for vending of scrap metals, used vehicles and machineries to steel producers through a legal channel.
Government Universities, Ethio telecom, Addis Ababa city administration are said to be examples of those storing scrap metals, used vehicles and machineries including the Ethio-Djibouti railway.
“We are working with the two regions and Addis Ababa city administration to pass the metal/the railway bases on their territory,” said Takele to Capital indicating that it has been six months since this has been started, “It will help factories to get input.”
Ethio-Djibouti railway, a 784 km gauge railway that connected Addis Ababa to the port city of Djibouti, presents a huge resourceful input in scrap metal.
The two agencies called for selling of scrap metals, aging vehicles and machines from private, governmental entities including universities, regions and city administrations to be sold out through a legal way though the Ministry.
Last month, the Ministry of Finance in a circular ordered the direct provision of scrap metal to industries based on allocations from the Ministry of Mines. The Ministry of Mines and the Ministry of Finance as well as the Government Procurement and Property Authority and regional offices in the regions will monitor the implementation of the decision in a hierarchical manner.
In their joint presser, the two institutions announced that the country spends over USD 1 billion in a year to purchase metals whereas local steel industries are underperforming which basically stems from shortage of inputs.
Ethiopia imported 2.5 billion dollars worth of metals and steel inputs in the last two years.
“The temporary measure taken by the government to solve shortage of inputs is legal vending of scrap metals from various entities. The decision is of national significance which will help to control the inflation in the industrial and construction sector which will solve the shortage of resources for the steel producers apart from removing scrap metal,” Takele elaborated.
He said that a task force has been established to oversee and take measures on those institutions, which failed to obey what he dubbed as a “national call”.
Haji Ibsa, Director General of the Public Procurement and Property Authority on his part said that, “Vehicles, machinery and scrap metals, which have been imported under very scare foreign currency have been seen disposed everywhere in addition to them polluting the environment.”
“In a circular signed by Ahmed Shide, Minister of Finance, 160 governmental agencies and 36 developmental enterprises were ordered to sell used vehicles and scrap metals to steel manufacturers,” he said.
He further unveiled that the Authority registered 2700 vehicles owned by governmental agencies, which are out of service, indicating price rate has been set to sell these properties.
Accordingly, a kg of steel scrap will be sold at a price of 64 Birr, scrap vehicle/machinery 51.75 Birr, and used vehicle parts at 51.25 Birr.
There are entities having significant number of properties to be sold out.
Takele explained that the former Metal and Engineering Corporation (METEC), which changed its name to National Industrial Engineering Corporation, accumulated 500 million tons of scrap and used vehicles.
He stressed that, “If we allocate these scrap metals and used vehicles properly to industries we can cover two years demands of steel manufacturers, and a cost of 2.5 million dollars can be saved”.
With a plan to ease the problems in the steel industry, Takele said, “The Ministry is commissioning a survey on the development of steel.”
He further said that his Ministry and Ministry of Justice are jointly crafting a directive on importing steel industries.

Intended to encourage the entire business community to follow the lead in abiding by the law, the third round of federal tax payers’ recognition ceremony was held on Thursday October 20, 2022 at Sheraton Addis hotel in the presence of president Sahle-Work Zewde and other senior government officials.

This year’s program has recognized 400 registered businesses and tax payers that have maintained transparent conduct and paid their taxes in a timely manner.
From this 400 awarded tax payers 40 of them are said to be platinum, 120 gold and 240 silver awardee tax payers, additionally 14 taxpayers were honored by being awarded 3 times with one tax payer being awarded a special prize for exposing corruption.

Ethio telecom launches an Omni channel supported cloud based contact center product for businesses.
During an event held on Tuesday October 18, 2022, Ethio telecom unveiled this new product to its customers.
“As a leading digital solutions provider and in alignment with our vision, mission and three year LEAD growth strategy, we have launched our cloud based contact center as a service which enables enterprises to boost their customers’ satisfaction,” the telecommunications giant stated.
Contact Center as a service is a cloud based customer experience solution that automates and standardizes the process of receiving and responding to customer requests across different communication channels such as voice, SMS, e-mail, websites, social media and chatbot beyond traditional call centre services, which are limited to voice services and handling social media separately.
“It will boost customer satisfaction by availing instant responses and reducing call waiting times resulting from long queues,” said FrehiwotTamiru, CEO of the company.
The center is said to provide omni channel live agent support which integrates requests made through different channels and allows the contact center agent to access them all at once thereby empowering the agent to provide full support to the customer and increase customer satisfaction thus enabling enterprises to better monitor their service quality by expanding customer feedback at low costs without the need to build their own contact center.
According to Ethio Telecom, the Contact Center is established as part of the company’s three year LEAD strategy.

EPA embarks on compliance follow-up on bottling industries

The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) sets to embark on the follow up in implementation of the new initiative that water bottling companies have taken to withdraw the use of masterbatch (MB) on their plastic bottle. Stopping the use of MB altogether is said to save up to USD 100 million annually.
It is to be recalled that when a detailed study was conducted by the Food, Beverage and Pharmaceutical Industry Development Institute, MB was identified to have a negative impact on the environment, health, economy and other related issues. Following the study, stakeholders in the water bottling industry as well as government bodies in one accord agreed to halt the use of MB – a plastic bottle colorant, as of October 11, 2022.
Following that decision is has become a common occurrence to now see non-colored bottles in the market.
Ashenafi Merid, General Manager at the Ethiopian Beverage Manufacturing Industries Association, expressed that bottlers following the unison agreement have suspended the use of colored bottles in their production, “If there are colored bottles in the market, it is because they were produced prior to the deadline. From here on end, non-colored packaging will dominate the market.”
He explained that the decision was taken during a workshop held early July following the recommendation by the Institute to suspend using MB.
Traditionally most of Ethiopian water bottlers have been using MB to colorize their plastic bottles to blue, which to some degree has its share of costs in foreign currency.
Ashenafi told Capital that at the workshop EPA has taken the initiative to control the implementation of the new practice.
“EPA early this week has informed us that it will commence its overlook on factories and bottlers with regards to implementation of the agreement into practice,” he added.
In a letter issued and sent on October 14 to the Ethiopian Plastic and Rubber Manufacturers Sectroal Association, the Food and Beverage Industry Research and Development Center ordered manufacturers to stop producing MB blended perform as per the decision passed a couple months ago.
According to Ashenafi, whilst speaking on the assessment carried out three years ago, he referenced that using MB has a cost of USD 30 million per annum, “Obviously this amount is much high at the current stage since the number of bottlers has increased.”
He elaborated that as per the latest study, bottlers are not using the MB and the used bottle shall be recycled as polyester fabric and yarn, which is an input for the textile industry.
“As per the study, the textile industry is allocated about USD 45 million to import polyester fabric and yarn for their production processes. So if we start producing non-colored bottles it can be transferred to other industries which in turn save the amount of foreign currency allocated to the textile industry. The new decision shall save USD 100 million directly and indirectly,” he added.
Ashenafi said that avoiding the use of MB has also significant contributions for bottlers since they save unnecessary production cost.
“It has a massive impact on forward and backward linkage,” he added.
Currently, there are 107 water bottlers in different corners of the country.