The Minister of Communication and Information Technology in Ethiopia has successfully introduced unified utility billing system. The Ministry has completed 79 per cent of client registration within a month for inclusion in the new billing system. The billing system is aimed at improving utilities billing systems in Ethiopia.

According to Debretsion Gebremichael, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Communication and Information Technology, the confusion and long queues created in the initial stage of the system a month ago has now been cleared and solved.

The unified billing system, a one stop shop for payment of utility bills enables utilities service users to easily  access services in  cohesive and convenient manner.

Out of the city's 368,000 water utility clients, 291,000 clients has paid their bills using the new system. From 348,000 electric power utility customers 308,000 were also given service in the first month.
66,000 telecom clients has also accessed the service out of the 350,000 subscribers.

Currently there are 32 branches which gives 11 hour service a day. The Ministry has plans to increase the number of branches to 41.

The unified billing system project was carried out by the Ministry through an agreement with Global Communication Solutions (GCS), a local IT company and its partners, the US-based NCR and AT&T.
The project has been designed based on the public-private partnership platform between MoCIT and a private company named Kifiya Financial Technology, a sister firm of GCS.

Source: Capital