The Ethiopian Revenue and Custom Authority allowed 12.3 billion birr in duty free privileges in the last two quarters of the 
fiscal year in Ethiopia.
The duty privileges amounts to 35.3% of the total revenue raised by the authority in the last six months according to Efrem Mekonnen, Head of the Communications Department with ERCA.
ERCA extends duty free privileges to members of the diplomatic community and investors in pre specified strategic sectors.
In related news ERCA has received 2,632 tips as part of its program to offer incentives to members of the community who report tax infractions. 1,643 of the tips were discovered to be correct while the remainder proved to be unfounded.ERCA paid an estimated 24.8 million as compensation for tips proven to be correct.
The authority earned 124.4 million birr just from discovering goods being traded through smuggling operations.
It is to be remembered that ERCA increased domestic revenue to 51 billion last year. An estimated 70% of this revenue was collected from 962 taxpayers.
The tax authority collected 35 billion birr on the federal level over the last two quarters. The authority was also able to raise 3.2 billion birr in revenue and tax from Addis Ababa.
The tax collected met the target set by the Ethiopian government in spite of being 3 billion birr less than expected by the tax authority.
The tax raised in the last two quarter exceeds the revenue collected for the same period last year by 10.2 billion birr.
Source: Capital
