Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Universal Sports) – It has never been an easy feat to win selection to the Ethiopian Olympic marathon squad. Ethiopian marathon runner Dire Tune, the 2008 Boston Marathon champion, found out last July just how competitive things can get when she tried to win a place on the country’s marathon team for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Ethiopia uses a complex selection system to pick its squad for major championships. Five runners are first selected based on finishing times in marathons across the globe. The runners then enter a training camp where selectors put them through multiple time trials and drills over a three-month period.
After winning Boston and running a personal best at the Houston Marathon, Tune entered training camp last year fourth fastest among five ladies vying for three coveted spots. But selectors picked her ahead of the faster Bezunesh Bekele (2nd in the 2008 Dubai Marathon). Tension started to grip the Ethiopian camp until it boiled over four weeks before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games.
“We were in the team bus returning from training when the others [Bekele, Gete Wami, and Berhane Adere] started talking about how I did not deserve to compete in Beijing,” she said in an interview earlier this week at a hotel near her home in Ethiopia’s capital. “Bezunesh [Bekele] started to confront me and we started fighting on the bus. At the end, other people came over and separated us.”
But the problems continued. A few days later, Tune was returning to the team hotel in the center of Addis Ababa with her husband Kelil Aman and training partner Deriba Merga when they were confronted by fellow Ethiopian national team marathoner Tessema Abshiro, the husband of Bekele. After an angry exchange of words between Merga and Abshiro, the latter pointed a pistol at Merga. Abshiro was later detained by authorities and spent the night at a police station. He was released on bail a few days later after Merga chose not to press charges.
Tune did not comment on her current relationship with Bekele. The two plus Merga are scheduled to compete in the Boston Marathon on April 20 while Abshiro is scheduled to run in the London Marathon on April 26.
“The whole situation was really bad,” Tune recalled painfully. “It disturbed the team morale and affected our results very badly in Beijing. I finished 15th, but I missed almost a week of crucial training due to the problems.”
Before the incident, everything was going according to plan for Tune in a ground-breaking year. She had started the year by successfully defending her Houston Marathon title in Texas in a personal best to 2:24.40.
And in April, she surprised many observers by winning in Boston, becoming only the second Ethiopian to win the event. Fatuma Roba is the other.
“I was told that the course would very difficult, but I was confident of finishing in the top three because I trained well,” she says. “I run side-by-side to Russian [Aleventine Biktimirova] for a long time and when I saw the finishing tape, I just raced for the finish. I did not really look at the time. My main focus was to win the race. I was really happy to be winning in Boston.”
Two months later, Tune was selected by organizers of the Golden Spike meet in Ostrava, Czech Republic to attempt to better Kenyan Tegla Laroupe’s world one-hour record, a seldom run event that initially puzzled Tune.
“I talked with my coach on how to prepare for it,” she says. “We decided that we should continue training for it at marathon pace. As I prepared, my confidence grew and went to Ostrava happy with myself.”
Helped by four compatriots who worked tirelessly to keep Tune on course, the 25-year old salvaged the attempt in the last 30 minutes. By the end of the hour, Tune had run 18.517kms, 176m further than Laroupe’s mark.
“The Ostrava spectators were very helpful and great,” she said after smashing her first ever world record. “I am indebted to my coach who helped me with the splits. The crowd gave me the power to run so fast and I could even accelerate in the finish.”
Buoyed by her triumph, Tune prepared for her Olympic debut before she says, “everything went wrong. It had a negative influence on my results in Beijing. We were five athletes in the beginning [of the training camp] hoping to be selected, there was a worry as to who the selectors would pick. We spent much of our energy in training to try and prove ourselves. I did not have much energy left when I run in Beijing because I had exhausted almost everything in training. I am not happy about my performance in Beijing. It was really bad. I did not get what I expected.”
In her bid to win an Olympic place, Tune changed her normal training regimen to meet the demands of the selectors at the Ethiopian Athletics Federation (EAF). She said the training with the national program focused mainly on endurance and did not include other training aspects she is used to such as running in the forest, on the track, on grass, and on gravel roads.
She says the consequences were far reaching beyond Beijing. “I tried to change back to my own training style after Beijing,” she says. “But it was difficult. When I was prepared for the New York Marathon after Beijing, I suffered an injury because I was trying to change training in a short time. I tried to follow the leaders until 30km, but I started experiencing pain. I finished fifth in New York, but the damage was already done.”
It took Tune three months to resume her previous form. She returned to winning ways in February this year with victory in Ras Al Khamiah Half Marathon. Her 1:07:18 time smashed the two-year old Ethiopian half marathon record previously held by Bezunesh Bekele.
“I was looking for the world record there,” she says. “I am happy that I run an Ethiopian record but I would have loved to go under 1:07.10. It is good preparation for a full marathon.”
Boston is normally lower on the priority list of a runner like Tune who is eager to improve her personal best. So why is she returning to such a difficult course when she has ambitions of breaking into the Ethiopian team for the World Championships in Berlin? The selection process for Berlin is similar to the one used for Beijing.
“The organizers really wanted me to run there and my manager thinks it is also good for me,” she says. “I also think that I will go there happy because I won last year.”
Tune says she is confident of running faster than her winning time last year. “Something like 2:23,” she predicts.
Tune’s main aim is to erase nightmare performances in previous major championships for the Ethiopian team. In her last two world championships, she did not finish the race in Helsinki in 2005 and struggled to 37th in Osaka two years ago.
“Like every athlete, I want to compete at the world championships,” she says. “I know this will be difficult as there are runners who have done 2:21 this season. If it was up to me, I want to line up for my country in Berlin and revenge my Olympic failure. It will be difficult, but not impossible.”
If she does not make the Ethiopian team for the world championships, Tune’s focus will shift back to chasing fast times on the circuit. “Until now, I have been running difficult courses,” she says. “If I do not make the world championship team, I want to run the Berlin Marathon. I want to run under 2:20.”
(Elshadai Negash is a freelance athletics journalist based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.)
(EthioPlanet) — Last week, EthioPlanet.com revealed the name of the mysterious woman who until then was only known as the “Ethiopian Woman” Count Alexandre de Lesseps had apparently fallen for.
There were some disputes in the blogosphere as to the veracity of what EthioPlanet revealed. To avoid unnecessary defamation, we’ve now released a picture to go along with the name.
The featured photograph was taken in a limousine during a recent trip to Addis Ababa (capital of the AU), Ethiopia.
A source, close to the couple, Count Alexandre de Lesseps and Princess Kemeria Abajobir Abajifar told EthioPlanet.com they were traveling in Ethiopia to promote micro-finance for Ethiopian women.
“They also have plans to open an orphanage in her hometown of Jimma, and to create in Addis Ababa, a museum of African history,” the source added.
Alexandre de Lesseps, 59, was raised in Khartoum, Sudan and in Tangiers, Morocco.
Microfinancing is, of course, nothing new to the Count. He is, among other things, an entrepreneur, investment banker, and has pioneered microfinancing in developing nations.
He is President of London based Coral Capital Ltd and Pandaw Investment Hldgs in Hong Kong. He is also co-founder and President of Blue Orchard Finance S.A., a leading micro finance management company based in Geneva.
More pictures will be released in the coming days featuring the couple together on their trip to Ethiopia.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AFP) — Ethiopia’s dictatorial regime will boost arms production to cut weapons imports and save its dwindling foreign exchange, the tribalist junta leader Meles Zenawi has said.
“Our main objective is to reduce our defence expenditure and its pressure on availability of foreign exchange,” Meles told reporters late Monday, without giving details.
“In order to do that, we have to reduce our imports and improve our exports. The objective is to take care of our defence requirements, primarily in terms of ammunition and partly in terms of armaments.”
Ethiopia currently produces assault rifles, rocket propelled grenades, small arms and hosts an assembly plant to manufacture tanks.
The country’s foreign reserves this month stood at 800 million dollars (598 million euros), down from two billion dollars last year.
The Horn of Africa country has one of the largest armies in Africa and last year increased its defence budget by 50 million dollars to 400 million for “stability reasons.”
Ethiopia’s army is estimated to comprise around 200,000 soldiers and imports arms mainly from China and eastern European countries.
Befakadu Moreda, a 45-year-old Ethiopian refugee settled in Houston, applied last month to bring an adopted son to the U.S., though not through the P-3 program. Moreda has no documentation to prove 19-year-old Ashenafi Endale was abandoned as a baby. Still, he said, he believes U.S. immigration officials will reunite him with Endale, a math whiz with an affinity for poetry. Moreda said he understands some people have abused U.S. immigration programs, but he said he has faith that U.S. immigration officials will sort out fraud from cases like his. Even without a blood relation, “He is my son,” Moreda said. “There is no doubt. No doubt.” […Houston Chronicle“>read more]
Ethiopia’s dictatorial regime may prosecute six of the country’s largest coffee exporters after the government said they have been hoarding beans bound for export, Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi said.
The government shut the exporters’ warehouses last month and suspended their licenses after accusing them of illegally stockpiling coffee and selling export-grade coffee on domestic markets. Some exporters were holding beans in anticipation of a currency devaluation, Eleni Gabre-Madhin, chief executive officer of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, said last month.
“I would not be surprised if some of them were to be taken to court,” Meles said in a press conference yesterday in Addis Ababa.
Coffee is Ethiopia’s largest export, accounting for 35 percent of the country’s export earnings last year. Stockpiling by exporters has “put pressure on the country’s foreign currency reserves,” the agriculture ministry said in a statement March 30.
Ethiopia’s agriculture ministry warned on March 30 that it had also taken unspecified “similar measures” against 88 other coffee exporters, of about 120 in the country involved in the business.
The prime minister said the 88 exporters wouldn’t face prosecution “whatever shortcomings they have had” in the past and that he expected they would learn from the crackdown on the other six exporters.
State-Owned Enterprise
Following the seizures, state-owned Ethiopian Grain Trade Enterprise said earlier this month it would begin exporting coffee from the country, Africa’s largest producer of the beans.
Meles said yesterday that the state-run grain importer had entered the market because the remaining private coffee exporters might not have the capacity to export Ethiopia’s coffee crop.
“The preference will be to the private sector actors,” he said. “There is no intention to establish a public monopoly in any of the agricultural markets.”
Ethiopia’s coffee exports have declined more than 10 percent to 76,674 metric tons in the first eight months of the fiscal year that began in July, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to trade ministry statistics.
The nation’s coffee export income has fallen to half the government’s target amid a decline in world prices and a ban on Ethiopian beans in Japan. Japan, which purchased about 20 percent of Ethiopia’s coffee shipments in 2007, banned imports last year after finding elevated residues of pesticide in a shipment of the beans.
Auction System
Ethiopia’s trade minister said the residues probably came from bagging coffee in sacks that had previously held chemicals and that the government has corrected the problem. Gabre-Madhin also said a change this year from a state-run auction system to an open-pit commodity exchange for trading beans temporarily interrupted supplies.
The government devalued the birr against the dollar in January in an attempt to build foreign currency reserves. One dollar buys 11.18 birr, compared with about 9.5 a year ago.
By Hilina Alemu And Addisu Deresse | Addis Fortune
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — More than 40 businesses, mainly in Merkato and Piazza areas, have been shut down over the last nine days after intelligence officers of the Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority (RCuA) allegedly caught them red-handed violating the Value Added Tax (VAT) Law, officials of the authority disclosed.
Over 100 individuals operating in these businesses (shops) were arrested under the surprise secret operation the authority started on April 4, 2009; close to 21 of them appeared before the Real Time Dispatch – the Authority’s own judiciary system for those caught red-handed – within 48 hours and the cases have been adjourned for this week (within 10 days of their arrest).
By the time Fortune went to press late last Friday afternoon, big names in the jewellery business around Piazza, near Cinema Empire area of the Arada District, along Hailesellassie Street, such as Africa, Lion, Tana, Eyerusalem and Gebremariam were some of those shops still closed as a result of the shut downs that began on April 4, 2009.
For instance, in Merkato, the largest open-air market in Africa, shops remained closed by press time after the secret investigators had paid them a visit.
“First, four people [intelligence officers] got into the shop,” an eyewitness said describing what happened in one of the shops that was closed and the people who run it arrested. “Then, one [of the officers] asked for jewellery, while the others looked around. The deal on the price went good till the [disguised] buyer asked for a receipt.”
To the surprise of the intelligence officers, the shopkeeper refused to give the undercover buyer a receipt because the price would include VAT; the “buyer” then went out, called the police and pressed charges against the shop, according to the eyewitness who insisted on remaining anonymous.
That was the climax of situation in the shops visited by the investigators that were in breach of the VAT Law; those that allegedly violated the VAT Law by not issuing VAT invoices landed in the authorities detention centre in Lagar customs facility.
“Three individuals who went into the shop together with the buyer served as witnesses,” the person who had observed the situation told Fortune.
Prior to this operation, the RCuA had initiated another tax move which the tax authorities tagged “desk audits.” For the past few weeks, these are some of the major tasks that kept RCuA’s Law Enforcement Department busy.
The desk audit is a form of review and appraisal of accounting books of private and share companies under the federal/large taxpayers category. It has targeted more than 1,000 companies for three years revision and appraisal of their accounting books on transactions from 2006 to 2008, and crosschecking these with the authority’s books, especially documents at its customs branch. There are six audit teams the RCuA has formed to conduct the desk audits.
The audits they conduct are to reconcile documents companies have self-declared during the three years (2006, 2007, and 2008), reports they have obtained from fiscal printers, and data collected from customs.
In yet another move, the authority is dealing with those it alleges are VAT registered entities but do not duly collect the tax as they sell goods without issuing a receipt, thereby prejudicing the government of the due to it.
This VAT proclamation breach issue has been something the authority planned to have dealt with long ago; now it is started and will continue with the operation, a source in the Law Enforcement Department of the Authority told Fortune.
“This is a daily routine task,” the source said. “The authority has been vested with the power and responsibility to collect tax and it has to do so, whatever it takes.”
The law enforcement intelligence team is under the supervision of Gebrewahed Weldegiorgis, former deputy head of Customs Authority, who has now become one of the four deputy directors of the RCuA.
The department has more than 100 intelligence officers. Verifying the expenditure and revenue of the targeted tax payers is part of the main duties of the intelligence team. They are responsible for following up targeted taxpayers suspected of declaring income much less than what their businesses are actually worth, or not registering at all, denying the government the taxes due to it.
There are two aspects of VAT included in Proclamation 609/2008, a law that amended the proclamation for VAT. One deals with the failure to register for VAT, while the other focuses on the failure to use VAT invoices, although registered.
“Any taxpayer who is required to register for VAT commits an offence if found not complying with such obligation and shall, upon conviction, be punished with a fine of not less than 10,000 Br and not more than 50,000 Br and imprisonment for a term of not less than one year and not more than two years,” states Article 50 (a) of the law.
Sub-Article (b) of the article reads, “Any person who is registered for VAT commits an offence if carries out transactions without VAT invoice and shall, upon conviction, be punished with a fine of not less than 10,000 Br and not more than 100,000 Br and imprisonment for a term of not less than two years and not more than five years.”
Nevertheless, if the tax due to the government computed based on the amount shown on the illegal invoice is in excess of 100,000 Br, then the fine shall be equal to the tax amount.
Contrary to these articles, which also state the penalties for breaching them, Tigist Abebe (not real name) a jewellery shopkeeper around Merkato, Werk Tera (a market place for gold jewellery), strongly believes that the sales volume on gold (jewellery) is diminishing as life gets costly. She believes that inclusion of VAT in the price would mean pushing the buyers away from the shop.
“If, for instance, we sell a 21 karat golden ring that weighs 1.15g for 225 Br without VAT and 258.75 Br with VAT, for such a society where paying tax is not much understood, the additional 33.75 Br is a waste,” Tigist told Fortune.
Most people do not buy jewellery for luxury these days. Rather, they consider it a way of saving money; therefore, the buyers think that paying additional money (VAT in this case) is like throwing the money away, she said.
“They can save the money in cash without incurring the cost equivalent to the VAT amount,” the shopkeeper said.
But that is not something tax authorities consider.
“We have no intention of making people lose their businesses and money,” Gebrewahed, the intelligence team leader told Fortune. “We only want to give lessons on the need to pay VAT.”
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Universal Sports) – It has never been an easy feat to win selection to the Ethiopian Olympic marathon squad. Ethiopian marathon runner Dire Tune, the 2008 Boston Marathon champion, found out last July just how competitive things can get when she tried to win a place on the country’s marathon team for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AFP) — Ethiopia’s dictatorial regime will boost arms production to cut weapons imports and save its dwindling foreign exchange, the tribalist junta leader Meles Zenawi has said.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — More than 40 businesses, mainly in Merkato and Piazza areas, have been shut down over the last nine days after intelligence officers of the Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority (RCuA) allegedly caught them red-handed violating the Value Added Tax (VAT) Law, officials of the authority disclosed.