The new minister of trade, Kebede Tchanie, and his chamber counterpart, Mulu Solomon, who is also the new president of the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Associations, are expected to chair the second federal Public-Private Consultative Forum (PPCF) on February 15, this month. The second consultative forum, scheduled almost a year after the first one, will deal with logistic issues of trade including customs procedures, customs valuation problems, customs inspection and the like. According to Teshome Beyene, head of the PPCF secretariat, the forum is going to be the first of at least three other forums to come this year. In an interview he gave to The Reporter last week, he said that trade ‘logistics matters’ is going to be a title for a sectorial forum that is scheduled for end the of this month. However, after the secretariat communicated the plan to the PPCF-unit at MoT, it was agreed that agenda was not a sector problem.  Rather, it was a federal one, it was learnt by The Reporter.

At the forum, Mulu and Kebede, both new to their post will take over the chairmanship from their predecessors, Eyesus Work Zafu and Abdurahman Sheikh Mohammed, in that order. The meeting is scheduled to be held at the Sheraton Addis Hotel. 

According to information from the secretariat, ‘buiness registration and licensing’, the original agenda topic for federal PPCF, was tentatively moved to the end of March as the ‘trade logistics matters’ was bumped up to be a federal PPCF agenda. The research conducted on the agenda topics is what is important to select suitable topics. In this regard, the business registration and licensing could be a sectorial forum agenda or not depending on the research output, the secretariat noted.

On the other hand, the national consultative forum, highest forum where the Prime Minister meets the business community, is also tentatively scheduled to be held in June.

The Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Chamber and the then Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI) has it that at least, one national, two federal and as many sectorial consultative forums as possible will be held annually.