The Land Bank and City Renovation Project Office of the Addis Abeba City Administration is to breakdown into two autonomous agencies to facilitate the implementation of the new land lease proclamation.

The proclamation implementation will mainly be the task of the Land Bank and Transfer Agency, yet to be established in a proclamation that will be issued in three months time.

The new draft directive issued to implement the new land lease proclamation, which has seen hardly any discussion in the parliament and hence faced criticism from the public, has designated the project office to handle the whole land auction process centrally, excluding the district offices.

The new agency will be in charge of handling the auctions along with other mandates that it will assume, according to a source in the city administration. It is mandated to arrange plots that will be developed under its land bank system and transfer to investors by lease or allocation, collect the lease price from the investors, control whether the investors have started construction in accordance with the lease contracts.

In order to perform these mandates, the agency's structure has three parts; Land Bank and Protection Department, Transfer of Developed Land Department and Lease Contract Follow-Up and Evaluation Department, according to a study document prepared by the city administration.

The first department will be in charge of arranging plots of land that can be developed in the land bank system and protect the plots from illegal acts while the second department will be floating tenders to transfer the developed plots by concluding a contract with investors.

The agency, that will be supervised by a board, will have a managing director and a deputy that will be appointed by the cabinet. Nominees have already been made, of whom Bekele Fetago, deputy manager of the dissolving project office, is likely be approved, according to a source in the Administration.

The development of vacant plots and city renovation, which used to be done by the project office, will now be the responsibilities of the Land Development and City Renovation Agency, also yet to be established, according to sources.