Council refers bills to parliament, approves a regulation

Addis Ababa, March 21, 2023 (FBC) – The Council of Ministers of Ethiopia, in its 18th regular meeting, thoroughly discussed on various issues and passed decisions today.

Accordingly, the council first discussed the bill on state-owned public development enterprises.

It is stated that the draft bill is proposed to ensure the transparency and accountability of the corporate governance system of public development enterprises, to strengthen their competitiveness and effectiveness by modernizing their corporate finance management system, and to improve the debt burden of development enterprises so that they can effectively fulfill their social service responsibilities without affecting their profitability and generally allow them to contribute to the national economy.

Hence, after discussing the proposed bill, the Council unanimously decided to refer it to the House of Peoples’ Representatives for approval with additional inputs.

Subsequently, the Council discussed draft bills to approve Ethiopia’s agreements with the Luxembourg government and the Swiss Confederation to abolish double taxation and prevent tax evasion.

The agreements that Ethiopia has made with the two governments to avoid double taxation and to prevent tax evasion have a significant contribution in encouraging the investors of the two countries to invest in Ethiopia. It is also indicated that it enables the investors to pay tax for one income just once.

After discussing the draft bills, the Council unanimously decided to refer them to the House of Peoples’ Representatives for approval with additional inputs.

Finally, the Council discussed a draft regulation to revise the establishment regulation establishment of the Ethiopian Railway Corporation.

The draft regulation is prepared to:

• enable the Ethiopian Railway Corporation to achieve its objective and mission by improving its authorized and paid-up capital, especially to complete the under-construction railway infrastructure and to put the completed ones into operation;
• increase the authorized capital to 221 billion birr to have better capacity for future railway projects; and
• amount its capital paid in cash and in-kind to 120 billion birr.

As a result of thorough discussion, the Council unanimously approved the regulation with additional inputs and decided to put it into effect from the day it is published in the Negarit Gazzette.