By Staff Reporter
September 19, 2019 (Ezega.com) -- The Addis Ababa City Government’s Trade and Industry Bureau has shut down more than 609 businesses and warned 2000 others allegedly for contributing to soaring inflation in the capital city.
In a briefing on Thursday, the head of city bureau, Engineer Emdaweq Abate, said shortage of basic goods, involvement of illegal brokers and businesses, as well as soaring contraband trade have caused galloping inflation in the metropolis.
According to the bureau, the contraband trade is widely going on in Addis Ababa where fruits and vegetables are sold at the heart of the city from trucks by illegal traders.
Emdaweq said the bureau has assessed the trading activities of some 5700 businesses in grain markers and vegetables markets and found out that almost half of them were not trading in the proper way.
In campaign it carried out in the past days, the bureau confiscated several quintals of fruits and vegetables which were loaded and sold by “illegal traders” during night time.
The confiscated goods are now being sold at a reasonable price through Et-fruit selling centers, while major basic food items, including teff, wheat, food oil and sugar are being distributed to the public via cooperatives.
The bureau claimed that the goods which were supplied to the market via contraband trade were of inferior qualities. However, it did not justify why it sold them out again after it seized them from the illegal traders.
The bureau also said it would work to create direct linkage between farmers and buyer cooperatives and build several market centers in bid to address growing inflation in the metropolis.
The annual inflation rate in Ethiopia soared to 17.9 percent in August 2019 from 15.5 percent in July. It is the highest inflation rate since September 2012, mainly attributable to lingering effects of drought and security problems amid an upsurge in ethnic violence across the country in recent months.
Prices continued to climb for food (23 percent vs 20.1 percent in July), especially major cereal types such as teff, barely, sorghum and maize, as well as some vegetables used daily, including onions and garlic.
Also, cost rose faster for non-food products (12 percent vs 10.3 percent in July). On a monthly basis, consumer prices inched up 2.32 percent, following a 1.27 percent increase in the previous month.
Inflation Rate in Ethiopia averaged 16.07 percent from 2006 until 2019, reaching an all-time high of 64.20 percent in July of 2008 and a record low of -4.10 percent in September of 2009.
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