Eritrea gets state food shops

2005-03-18 18:40

Asmara - Eritrea's sole political party, the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), plans to open some 50 food shops in and around Asmara to improve the distribution of staples, officials said on Friday.

The PFDJ will open "about 50 shops in Asmara and its region in a month or two, then in the rest of country," the head of the party's political affairs, Yemane Gebreab, told reporters.

"Its for reasons of efficient distribution," he said, offering few additional details of the scheme except that "private shops will remain".

Eritrea is currently "faced with extraordinary circumstances, and in the context of war the state has to take on more responsibility," he said, referring to ongoing border tensions with Ethiopia.

Five years after the end of the 1998-2000 border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the frontier has still not been demarcated with Addis Ababa refusing to accept the 2002 findings of an independent border commission set up as part of the peace settlement.

Currently, troops from the two countries are massed on both sides of the border where about 3 000 UN peacekeepers patrol a buffer zone between the neighbours.

Despite the PFDJ opening the shops, Yemane said the party was not opposed to a market economy and Mehari Tsegay, vice-governor of Eritrea's Maakel region which comprises Asmara, stressed that they would sell only food.

"It will only be food shops," Mehari said.

Yemane noted that the party now runs between five and 10% of Eritrean businesses but that in the long run "the market economy is important and I don't think we can substitute it with anything else".

In January, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, the chair of the PFDJ, said that nearly all companies privatised since independence from Ethiopia in 1993 were losing large amounts of money and steps needed to be taken to change the situation.

"In general, almost all of them (the privatised firms) are in crisis and are heading towards bankruptcy," Isaias said in a nationally televised address.

He said Eritrea had "to rectify the problem" but did not offer further details and did not use the word "nationalisation."

- AFP