The , which is the only importer and distributer of petroleum products in Ethiopia, has charged three refined petroleum distribution companies for defaulting on their debts, Capital learned.
EPSE said the companies being prosecuted are Genet Petroleum, Erta-ale Oil Ethiopia and Bilen Petroleum. They are being charged with not paying 200 million birr. Other refined petroleum distribution companies are in danger of facing prosecution unless they pay their debts soon.
All three companies joined the industry as recently as 2015 and have around 20 stations.
Genet petroleum was established by a young couple in 2017 with a registered capital of 53 million birr, the company has already built a couple of gas stations in Addis Ababa and different regional towns at a cost of 700 million birr.
Since 2017, Genet petroleum has been an official partner to the Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC), a leading force in the economic diversification and sustainable development of the UAE.
In order to obtain an operating license from the Ministry of Trade, an operator should construct a 500,000 liter depot, and have a minimum of six filling stations required to get a license to operate as a petroleum retailer. There are 23 refined petroleum distribution companies operating in the country.
Out of the total distributors, four are major distributors including NOC, Oil Libya, Total and YBP, accounting over for 90pct of the nation’s fuel distribution. The remainder is covered by the other companies.
Ethiopians have been consuming more fuel meaning there is a need for more infrastructure including terminals, storage tanks, pipelines and related logistics. The enterprise procures petroleum from the international market through open international tenders.
According to EPSE estimates, the country would need 2,780,000 metric tons of gas-oil, 840,000 metric tons of jet-fuel, 494,000 metric tons of gasoline and 83,000 metric tons of fuel oil. The country’s total annual fuel demand in 2019 is estimated at 4,197,000 metric tons valued at 2.8 up to USD three billion.
Alemayehu Tegaye, Communication Director of EPSE told Capital that 50 percent of the gas-oil and 100 percent of the jet fuel would be supplied by the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC). Fifty percent of the gas-oil will be purchased from oil trading companies through an open international tender.
EPSE had planned to import 987,751 Metric Tons of refined petroleum products from July to September 2019. The performance report shows 932,057 Metric Tons of refined petroleum products have been imported during the period; indicating an accomplishment of 94percent of the supply plan. The payment settlement shows that above Birr 20.53 Billion have been paid for the petroleum product supplied in the period mentioned.
The Enterprise was originally the Ethiopian Petroleum Association Company in 1967, the organization has been known as EPSE since 2012 and was commissioned to supply sustainable refined petroleum products including gasoline, kerosene, light and heavy fuel oil in the country.
Petrol companies default on millions
Djibouti to host Ethiopia’s Navy
Ethiopia’s new Navy will be based in Djibouti and the naval command head office will be in Bahir Dar. When Abiy Ahmed became Prime Minister, he announced that the country would rebuild its navy, redeeming its dissolution which occurred during the regime change in 1991 when the nation lost its water outlets.
Although the government announced they would resurrect the navy again its base had not yet been decided on. Assumptions were the location would be in Eritrea, Djibouti, or Sudan. A source following the case, told Capital that the government has decided to locate its initial base at Djibouti.
Sources indicated that during his latest travel to Djibouti on the third week of October the naval base issue was discussed by Abiy with Ismail Omar Guelleh, President of Djibouti.
France is helping the Ethiopian government rebuild the naval force and currently some of the naval personnel have already trained in France, a major power supportive of Ethiopia’s reforms.
Sources familiar with the issue say Ethiopia’s under formation navy has opened a temporary office at the facility which the Metal and Engineering Corporation (MetEC) uses as a head office around Mexico Square, separately from Ministry of Defense.
Sources said the naval command in Ethiopia will be based in Bahir Dar, capital of Amhara region. Brigadier General Kindu Gezu, is leading the reestablishment process in the position of Navy Force Commander, while the search continues for a formal Chief Commander, expected to come to conclusion in the coming weeks.
The military has been the pioneer of the reform agenda since Abiy came to power, he has stated that the reform should follow the dynamism of the world and the region.
A year ago Abiy said: “We built one of the strongest ground and air forces in Africa now we should build our naval force capacity.”
Since the separation of Eritrea, Ethiopia has become a landlocked country with the biggest population in that world that does not have sea port. However several recommended in this hostile region the country needs to have naval forces, for the last 28 years it has only had commercial vessels some of which are operated by former naval personnel.
Abiy’s first official visit was to Djibouti when the countries agreed on several things including swapping shares on enterprises in both countries and that Ethiopia would take stakes in Djibouti ports and develop a new port.
Before the PM came to power in April 2018, an Ethiopian delegation visited Obock, a small coastal town located on the northern shore of the Gulf of Tadjoura in Djibouti, to evaluate the area for a future port to be built by Ethiopia.
It is not confirmed if the naval base will be settled around Djibouti City like other bases or far from the capital.
Djibouti is connected with Ethiopia by two asphalt roads via Afar and Somali region and the modern electronic railway line to the major port outlet for Ethiopia. The country has already entertained big powers in the world including France and China to settle their military bases along its coastal lines.
Capital tried to get more information from the Press Secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs but was unable to do so.
WORKERS & PARASITES
Without reciting classical critical theories on social class divisions, (Marxists, et al.) one can easily observe, even decidedly conclude, that our polarized world is increasingly breeding grave resentments which might well lead to transformative revolutions in the not so distant future. Inequality between and within countries has now reached a level of discord that is not going to be managed using old tricks. The prevailing lopsided global economic regime continues to add wealth to the already rich, while dispossessing the majority. In the parlance of the radicals, ‘revolutionary situations’ are now present in almost all nation states of the world system, awaiting the emergence of quality political leadership to lead the way!
For our purpose, we will heuristically define ‘workers’ as all those who have to earn their keeps by actually doing something tangible. It includes those who are directly and materially engaged in producing goods and services to society at large. Therefore, this category of ‘workers’ includes small private enterprises, as well as genuine entrepreneurs. Defining capitalists as those who ‘own’ means of production might have had its analytic use in centuries past. However, in today’s debt infested global economic regime, where actively engaged capitalists/companies are up to their eyeballs in debt, tax burden, etc., the very idea of ownership has become a source of contention. In reality, so-called owners have been transformed into mere slaves, sweating it out to satisfy the excessive greed of their financial bosses, i.e., banks, etc. In all honesty, very few owners/companies can claim to have real, not phantom net worth (positive equity) in their businesses (productive assets). Market valuations being what they are today (detached from real clearing prices) wealth cannot be accurately calculated using traditional parameters. The once conventional price discovery mechanisms are now lost to the fantasies of speculative finance. Hence, our simplistic definition of ‘workers’ justifiably encompasses almost anyone and everyone in the world, except the few privileged parasites of high finance. These parasites differ from the rest of us in one crucial respect; they are the premiere thieving goons of late modernity!
By and large, ‘parasites’ are those who unduly/unfairly benefit from the maliciously structured world system. The continuous dispossession of the working stiff by the officially designated parasites is one of the built-in features of the system’s accumulation process. The category of parasites includes, amongst others, politicians on the pay of corporations, banksters, unicorn companies, etc. The facilitators are the old culprits; lawyers, accountants, media, security personnel, etc. See the article next column. If truth be told, parasites and workers have been marching on their separate ways since 1971, to put a date on the currently accelerating polarizing process. It all started when money freed itself from the various restrictions put upon it by the Bretton Woods Agreement-1944. It is the beginning of an era when the global parasitic class was allowed to systemically undermine hard-earned money. Creating phony money in abundance, to steal the sweat/labor time of the working stiff, earnestly began in 1971. 1971 was the year when the convertibility of the US Dollar to gold was severed. The 1944 agreement stipulated that all currencies of countries were to be pegged to the US dollar and in turn the dollar was to be fixed at $35 to an ounce of gold. In other words, since 1971, countries were allowed to create as much money as they want from thin air without any restriction, as previously imposed by the gold standard! This crucial decision triggered the inflationary regime of late modernity and by extension the immiseration of workers all over the world.
Workers in the rich countries have started to articulate alternatives to liberate themselves from the polarizing world order. Brexit, Trumpism, Yellow vests, Italian politics, Catalonia’s secession, Greece’s economic contraction, etc., etc., are all manifestations of deepening disgruntlement. In the in-between countries or what are called the semi-peripheries, like that of East Europe and South America, one can expect more chaos to unfold. In the poorer countries of the south, violent resistance to the prevailing paradigm is already underway. Distressingly, there seem to be no visible trajectory as well as capable leadership to lend a helping hand. Instead, it is the primordial instincts of ‘identity politics’ that is currently in play (Ethiopia, et al.) Don’t forget; our elites, for the most part, have no clue as to what is happening in the world system. These dimwits of Africa are only capable of stupidly imitating what has stopped working elsewhere. Articulating a smart strategy to find a way out of the quagmire, frankly speaking, is way beyond our current elites’ intellectual, cultural, emotional, spiritual capacity! So suffer we must!
In Ethiopia, those occupying state power have managed to create a virile breed of parasitic goons, fronting as entrepreneurs and business people, oligarchs more appropriately. Ethiopia’s Mafiosi State, which has been dominating the formal state for almost three decades, was interested (more than anything) in the institutionalizing nepotism, ethnic fixations, grand political corruptions and the likes. These psychopathic politicos occupying state power cultivated a system of ‘rent seeking’ par excellence. Even the formal sector was not spared. Ethiopia’s banking sector, which exhibits the classic symptoms of a Ponzi scheme, is a case in point.. For example if one invests in the banking sector, one is guaranteed to get, at the minimum, a 30% annual dividend. At least this is how it has been so far in the Mafiosi dominated financial sector. On the other hand, if a worker takes out a loan from the bank to start a legal business, she is unlikely to get a 30% return scot-free, given the various hustles associated with the normal operation of a business enterprise (payroll, cost of goods, utilities, rent, taxes, etc.) This example perfectly illustrates what we have been trying to say in the above paragraphs. Parasites make money and workers get dispossessed. Something has to yield!
Unless systemic effort to redress past grievances is initiated, trust in the system will not be recovered, rhetoric aside. The highly misguided policy of parasitic/criminal accumulation, facilitated by the ‘Mafiosi State’, will only lead to violent disaster, under various guises (ethnic, religion, etc.) This column has been advocating for the institutions of a comprehensive integrity system, overseen by the kosher elements of society, for almost two decades, but to no avail. Payback time is approaching and it is also time for workers to reflect on the moral of the following. “The best slaves are those who think they are free.” Wolfgang Goethe. Good Day!
Birhan Banks to double paid up capital
Birhan Bank plans to double its paid-up capital in the forthcoming general assembly, to catch up with adapt to change and aggressively compete in the financial sector. The bank achieved the target of its paid-up capital of 2 billion birr a year early than anticipated.
Birhan Bank marked their ten-year anniversary with the motto: “Fruitful Years, Bright Future” at the Ethiopian Airline Skylight Hotel on November 26, 2019, in the presence of the Central Bank governors, shareholders, and dignitaries from financial institutions.
“Increasing paid-up capital is top of the agenda in the coming general assembly as we are always striving to grow, compete and work in accordance with international standards,” Gumachew Kussie, Chairman of the Board of Directors said.
Abraham Alero, President of the Birhan Bank says they are improving the economy by financing economic activities, creating jobs and attracting hard currency.
So far, over 20 billion birr has been injected to the economy over the last ten years which has proven successful in creating indirect jobs via investment, in addition to the direct job opportunities, created for over 4,000 employees.
As part of being socially responsible, the bank participated worked on the Sherger beatification project adding that they plan to incorporate a business model with bettering society.
Birhan Bank also has paid over half a billion birr in profit tax into the national economy over the last 10 years. They stand first in the number of shareholders, and this has paid many dividends to the 15,000 shareholders.
Birhan was a pioneer in banking operations with a core banking system which has integrated the banking business with a central data base to improve customer service.
The bank also invested in ICT infrastructure at a cost of three million USD using an IBM equipped data center facility to take advantage of the digital economy.
“Modernizing ICT will be a priority so that as telecom technology catches up with the rest of the world we can provide more convenience for customers,” Kumachew adds.
The bank expanded to over 200 branches. They have total assets of 19.2 billion birr and 15 billion birr in deposits. 
Established in 2009 with an authorized capital of 300 million birr, and paid-up capital of 95.7 million birr, the current paid-up capital has reached 2 billion birr and is expected to double during the upcoming general assembly expected to be held in the middle of next month.
During the occasion, the bank awarded certificates of appreciation to a dozen people for their contribution of 10 fruitful years.
As the National Bank figure indicates, as of June 2019, the total assets of the financial system were about 1.5 trillion-birr equivalent to the 70.2 percent of Ethiopia’s Gross Domestic Product.
