Mohammed Omer Mulla

  Puntland State lawmakers on Thursday elected Abdirashid Yusuf Jabrill as the house's new speaker. The elected speaker secured 46 votes, while his closest rival Abdijamal Osman Mohamed received 17 out of 63 votes casted in the second round in total, the head of the election commission announced. Speaking for the very first time before the parliament, Hon. Abdirashid Jibril argued in restoring Puntland’s peace and security and upholding the state’s constitution and laws. Abdirashid, was a former presidential official during president Abdiwali Mohamed Ali Gaas 5 years term. He is good art, raised up in the music and literature industry, campaigned for president Gaas with his art talents, known as Abwaan Abdirahsid. He hails from Sanaag and Highland regions, looks a very visible, strong politician there, as far as many locals and politicians are concerned.

Somalia’s cabinet approved an 18% increase in the government’s budget for next year to $460 million, the finance minister said. The Horn of Africa nation estimates it would have spent $390 million by the end of 2019, Finance Minister Abdirahman Dualeh Beileh told reporters Monday in the capital, Mogadishu.  It initially had a budget of $340 million for this year, but increased spending plans after collecting higher-than-expected revenue. Beileh said he’d present the estimates to lawmakers later this year. Economic growth this year could come in at 2.9%, according to International Monetary Fund estimates. Source: Bloomberg

Somalia will announce plans in December for its first ever oil and gas licensing round, its oil minister said on Tuesday, as the frontier market looks to attract new investment after decades of civil strife.  At least three mortar bombs were fired last month at Mogadishu’s international airport, the latest attack in a wave of violence that has afflicted the Horn of Africa nation since clan warlords overthrew a dictator in 1991.  Today much of the fighting is between rival clans and an Islamist insurgency, with Al Qaeda-aligned Al Shabaab, which is seeking to topple the U.N.-backed government, launching attacks in Mogadishu and across the country.  The Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources said the minister will announce in December when it plans to launch the bid process in 2020. “We are presenting up to 15 blocks,” Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Abdirashid Mohamed Ahmed told Reuters on the sidelines of an African oil and gas confe...

The hearing of a maritime-border dispute between Somalia and Kenya, which is calling for a negotiated settlement, has been postponed again, and is now scheduled for June. Kenya’s reapplication for a postponement was granted on the understanding that there will be no further delay, according to documents from the United Nations International Court of Justice. The session was due Nov. 4. The case is related to the neighbors’ claims of ownership of a 150,000 square-kilometer (58,000 square-miles) area off their Indian Ocean coastline, that’s said to be rich in oil, gas and tuna fish. In 2014, Somalia went to court to challenge a 2009 agreement that set its maritime border along latitudinal lines extending 450 nautical miles into the sea. It’s the second time the ICJ moves dates for court-hearing dates on Kenya’s request and against the wishes of Somalia. Kenya had asked the sessions to be held in September 2020 to allow it time to recruit a new legal team. In the mean...