Center for Accelerated Women Economic Empowerment /CAWEE/ holds a forum centered around increasing women’s economic empowerment which is a necessity when considering the long-term sustainable development and the ultimate goal of the SDGs.
CAWEE worked in partnership with Oxfam and FEMNET to forge brighter paths for African women in development and women in SMEs so as to access public procurement by assessing the existing contexts, opportunities, challenges, possible solutions, risks and recommendations.
Different government and private stakeholders, and women entrepreneurs participated on the discussions held at Radisson hotel on Friday May 6, 2022.
As per the discussions held during the forum, to boost women businesses was largely believed to create jobs and inject the market with new ideas and competition. To this end, the Government was advised to: increase women-owned suppliers winning Government contracts, set aside affirmative action that encourages women in SMEs to easily benefit from public procurement, plan for gender-responsive procurement, tackle gendered corruption through gender-responsive anti-corruption laws, and monitor gender-disaggregated procurement data.
Mainly policy influencing is said to ensure that women in SMEs secure preferred access to public procurement, thereby empowering them economically to contribute to a greater share in the economy of their families and the country due to the newly revised and enacted policies, legal frameworks and directives.
Women in SMEs in Ethiopia have insignificant involvements in public procurements where expenditure on public procurement in the country takes the largest (64% of the annual budget) share from the annual Government budget with 14% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP); to which the country’s budget for 2021/22 was 561.7 billion Birr or 12.9 billion dollars.
According to the International Trade Centre, “Making Public Procurement Work for Women”, is enshrined in international conventions and declarations, including the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and all available evidence confirms that supporting women’s entrepreneurship and women-owned businesses helps to increase the pie for all to benefit. More importantly, women’s economic empowerment is recognized as a condition/necessity for long term sustainable development, the ultimate goal of the SDGs.
CAWEE holds forum to empower women in business
NBE’s monetary policy pays dividends
The monetary policy action introduced by the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) early this fiscal year surges banks’ reserve by a fifth as of the end of last year.
It is to be recalled that after reviewing the economic and financial sector developments in late August 2021, the Board of Directors of NBE passed several decisions.
Atop of the decisions made was the revision and increase of the reserve requirement of financial institutions by double from the long-established five percent. At the time, the board gave a transition period of three months starting from September 1 2021 in order to meet the new reserve requirement on birr and foreign currency deposit liabilities.
Under the 7th amendment of setting the reserve requirement Directive No.SBB/80/2021 that was issued late August reversing the SBB/55/2013 Directive that was issued on March 1, 2013, NBE ordered banks to double their reserves.
On its latest quarterly report for the 2021/22 second quarter, NBE stated that the monetary policy action that was taken by the regulatory body led to a surge in the deposit liability of central bank. In the stated period, NBE’s deposit liabilities shot up by 25.3 percent annually and 25.8 percent compared with the first quarter of the same fiscal year.
The deposit liabilities have capped to highs of 190 billion birr up from 151.7 billion birr of the same quarter of last fiscal year.
From the stated amount, 145.2 billion birr was taken up by financial institutions that are mainly banks. According to the quarterly report, NBE’s liability for banks has also increased by almost 21 percent standing at 145.1 billion birr from 129 billion birr a year ago.
The decision of the NBE board to double the reserve requirements was mainly to curb the growing inflation.
The country first introduced the reserve requirement through Directive No. SBB/14/96 which became effective on January 1, 1996 with a 10 percent requirement.
The highest reserve requirement was 15 percent under the 4th amendment of Directive No. SBB/45/2008, which was effective on April 7, 2008 and lasted until January 1, 2012 which then reduce to 10 percent.
The 2008 and the years that followed are notoriously remembered as the years that the country recorded its highest inflation ever. It was recorded that in the first quarter of 2008 the general inflation stood at 60 percent, while the food inflation was at 81 percent.
In related development, NBE on its second quarter economic review showed that the current account receipts increased by over ten percent meanwhile public transfers declined sharply.
It said that current account receipts stood at USD 4.6 billion and showed a 10.3 percent annual increase due to higher merchandise export (26.9 percent), service proceeds (27.4 percent) and private transfers (14.6 percent) despite sharp decline in public transfers (53.1 percent).
Similarly, total current payments increased 27.5 percent to USD 6.0 billion on account of strong growth in merchandise import (31.0 percent), services payment (17.5 percent) and public transfers (139.1 percent), in contrast with a 20.6 percent slowdown in private transfers.
As a result, current account deficit (including official transfers) widened to USD 1.4 billion from USD 544 million deficit a year earlier.
First Biodegradable Vape to Launch Worldwide
ALD Group Limited (ALD) will announce at The Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum (‘GTNF’)’s In Focus event that it is set to launch the first biodegradable vaping product worldwide in mid-2023 – which will also be 90% recyclable (including the packaging, plastic shell, PCBA, mouthpiece and battery).
Currently named the ‘Eco-friendly, Biodegradable Vape Solution’ (EBVS), the new device will take as little as three months to biodegrade, and was created in response to consumer and market demand, as numerous international tobacco customers – with the global scale needed to make vaping more sustainable across the world – have approached ALD with their requests to make e-cigarettes more environmentally friendly.
Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Shenzhen, ALD is a high-tech enterprise specializing and leading in electronic atomization technology research and applications. ALD′s business covers ENDS (Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems), IMV (Inhaled Medical Vaporizer) and HTPs (Heated Tobacco Products).
The Embassy of Israel fare welled two Ethiopian mothers of two Israeli Soldiers honored and awarded the President’s Medal of Excellence
The Embassy of the State of Israel fair welled two Ethiopian mothers of two outstanding Israeli soldiers to Israel to attend the President’s Medal of Excellence award ceremony given by Isaac Herzog, President of the State of Israel. Nathnael Fantahun, 24 and Abrash Zagia, 23 recipients of this award migrated to Israel and joined the military.
Abrash, the first recipient solider serves as medical secretary at the Medical Services Headquarters, received the Presidential Outstanding Medal along with 119 other soldiers. The soldiers receive this award for their significant service and extraordinary contribution to the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and the State of Israel. In 2018, Abrash immigrated to Israel from Addis Ababa as a lone soldier, her Jewish father died 20 years ago when she was a child and her mother, Alganesh Werku, stayed in Ethiopia.
Nathnael Fantahun is the second recipient is a solider awarded with President’s Medal of Excellence award for his excellent achievement in the military. His mother Emebet Negussie said that this was something that was beyond her expectation and everything still feel surreal.
