CAIRO, June 18 (Reuters) - Egypt’s food exports to Libya and Sudan will face increasing barriers after the introduction of new import duties and transport restrictions, the head of Egypt’s Food Industries Export Council said on Thursday.

Hany Berzy told Reuters Libya’s decision to impose a 10 percent import duty on Egyptian food commodities and Egypt’s decision to prohibit transfer of food products to Sudan via land was a double blow to the sector.

“Unfortunately, everyone is trying to introduce extra taxes to protect their local industries despite the fact that we have an Arab free trade agreement,” Berzy said, adding he did not know the exact reason Egypt restricted land transportation for commodities bound for Sudan. Read the full story

Johannesburg, South Africa: Anglo Gold Ashanti Limited and Thani Dubai Mining Limited have announced the formation of a strategic alliance to explore, develop and operate mines across the Middle East and parts of North Africa.

Countries of interest include Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Eritrea, Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan. Each company will have a 50% interest in the alliance which will explore for gold, precious and base metals.

The alliance is intending to bring together a combination of regional business knowledge and relationships with global exploration and mining expertise. Thani has extensive knowledge of developing resource businesses in the Middle East and Africa, long standing and high level relationships with national governments and major industry players, a thorough understanding of risks associated with mineral resource development and the requisite technical know-how. Read the full story

13th COMESA Summit 2009

Lusaka (Zambia) - The organisation for a common market for Eastern and Southern Africa COMESA, is going to hold the 13th summit of the Head of States 2009 from the 7th to the 8th of June in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.

COMESA was established in the 1960s in order to enhance regional economic co-operation between the participating member countries.

Member states are Burundi, Comoros, D.R Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Uganda, Seychelles, Sudan, Swaziland, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The slogan used by the organisation is; “400 million Africans UNITED in ONE market”.

COMESA is expected to announce the launch of a customs union between all member states during the coming summit. Eritrea and the Democratic Republic of Congo have each been chosen to present a COMESA project, which is serving as a testimonial during the summit for the planned customs union .

Eritrea is presenting the EU funded COMESA project ASYCUDA, which is an undertaking in cooperation with the Eritrean Customs Department.

ASYCUDA was launched in five African countries in 2006 with a budget of 3 Million Euros. One of the goals of ASYCUDA is to improve the exchange of transit data between borders through web services.

According to Mr. Haile, the Eritrean Director General of the Customs Department in Eritrea, the project is aiming to modernize the administrative and operational infrastructure of Eritrea’s customs administration, in order to keep up with the global development of computerized systems.

The project was launched three years ago, aiming to computerize the whole Eritrean customs operation in order to enhance statistical processing, accounts management , declaration processing, goods release and report generation.

In 2007 the first implementation of ASYCUDA was finalized at Asmara Airport. In the following year 2008 Asmara Railway customs station, the port of Massawa and the port of Assab customs stations received their ASYCUDA upgrade.

Mr. Haile states, that the initial project scope did not include the post station and the airport passenger terminal in Asmara. However, the system modernization was also implemented at these facilities. Future plans aim to extend the project to Tesseney customs station on the border to Sudan.

The planned COMESA customs union is intended to facilitate trade between the member countries and reduce bureaucratic barriers in order to improve productivity.

The World Bank has published it’s “Doing Business 2009″ report on Eritrea. Since 2006 the World Bank is publishing a report every year on the conditions for starting up a business in 181 countries. In the 2009 World Bank analysis, Eritrea is rated based on 10 quantitative indicators, which measure the climate for opening a business in Eritrea in comparison to other economies.

The indicators are;

• starting a business
• dealing with construction permits
• employing workers
• registering property
• getting credit
• protecting investors
• paying taxes
• rading across borders
• enforcing contracts
• closing a business

From the 10 indicators above the following outline is going to focus solely on starting a business and protecting investors. At the bottom of this article a summary of the “Ease of Doing Business” result for Eritrea will be given.

The business we are looking to start up is a limited liability company, which is comparable across economies, in the biggest city of Eritrea (Asmara). The company is 100% domestically owned, does not own real estate or is receiving special benefits and does employ between 10 to 50 employees. The start up capital is 10 times income per capita.

Read the full story

eritrea-wind-engergy

However, there is a “wind of change” coming in the name of the Wind Energy Application Pilot Project financed by the UNDP and the Global Environment Facility. Under the project it is planned to provide electricity for seven villages in the area in 2009. The prospects that the venture will be successful are promising. According to the local officials and the responsible implementation team of Turkish engineers, wind speeds of over seven knots are required to produce sufficient electricity. Along the Red Sea cost of Eritrea, winds can reach up to 10 knots or more. The planned wind park installations in Assab and the region will reduce fuel dependency and reduce expenditure of fuel imports. Read more: IRIN.