Twenty-Two Companies On Board For Second Phase Of The Bole Lemi Industrial Zone

The Ministry of Industry (MoI) is bringing 22 companies onboard for the second phase construction of the Bole Lemi Industrial Zone – the first hub exclusively for export-oriented manufacturers.

The Ministry signed contracts worth 1.8 billion on Thursday, October 31, 2013, with a total of 15 companies, including one consultant, MH Engineering. There are seven more agreements yet to come. These contractors, all first grade. will be engaged in developing factory shades for the project that rests on 156ha of land in Bole District.

The contractors that built the five factories and four office blocks in the first phase have also been awarded the construction of the second phase. These companies include Teklebrehan Ambaye Construction Plc, Sahle Mariam Construction, AMB Construction, Rama Construction Plc, TNT Construction and the Chinese contractor CGCOC Ethiopia Ltd. All except the last are local companies.

This phase of the project, which will have 10 shades, each on 11,000sqm, and five shades, each on 5,500sqm, is scheduled to be completed within six months. They will then be transferred to local and foreign companies as per the agreement.

“We ask that you be loyal and complete per the schedule in the agreement,” Ahmed Abetew, minister of Industry, told the contractors at the signing. “Otherwise, the measures will be harsh.”

The first phase took the contractors more than six months to deliver, despite agreeing to take only three.

“The problem was that we were dreaming in expecting completion after just three months of construction,” said Yaregal Misiki, director of industry at the Ministry. “In actual fact, its completion within just six months makes it one of the most successful in the history of public infrastructure in the country.”

Taking into account the results of that segment of the project, this second phase gives contractors six months to complete their tasks.

In the first phase of the construction, two 10,000sqm and three 5,000sqm industrial shades were built with 633 million Br, in 2012, and transferred to companies that export 100pc of their products.

Taking a total of 15,000sqm of shades last month, George Shoe – a Taiwanese shoe manufacturer – has become the first foreign manufacturer at the industrial zone.

In addition to George Shoe, three other companies, from India, Korea and Pakistan, have also rented shades in advance, at a rate of a dollar a square metre.

Aiming initially at assisting the export performance of the country, all the shades in the industrial zone are rented to companies that can export 100pc of their products.

The country’s export plan has been growing at a rate of at least one billion dollars each year over the last three years, since the government started implementing its Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP).

As a result, a total of 5,130ha was allocated for industrial purposes in four cities and towns across the country, including Addis Abeba. Other zones are to be located in Dire Dawa, a self-administered city about 515km east of the capital; Kombolcha, 376km to the north of the capital in Amhara; Shillabo, 1,140km from the capital in the Somali Regional State; Hawassa, 273km south of the capital in the Southern Region and Akaki Kality in Addis Abeba.

To date, it is only the Bole Lemi Industrial Zone that is operational.

In Kombolcha, an Israeli company that signed a memorandum of understanding with the MoI is conducting a study to construct the shades, according to Sisay Gemechu, state minister of the investment and industry division at the Ministry of Industry.
Source: Addis Fortune