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The Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority (ERCA) announced the finalization of a draft amendment for taxation laws.

The final draft is sent to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED) for feedback, according to Mekonnen Ayele, legal advisor with ERCA. The draft amendment bill will amended existing tax proclamation and regulation on various taxes, including Excise Tax, VAT, Turnover Tax, Sur Tax and Income Tax. Add a comment Add a comment

The Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) has accepted all the participants, except one, of its exclusive auction for farmers’ cooperatives seats on May 16, 2013. ECX floated the 30 seats in April 2013, reserving 12 for coffee, 10 for sesame and five for haricot supplying cooperatives, with the remaining three left open for other commodities.

The bid has attracted few participants despite the exchange has postponed the closing date of the bid to encourage more cooperatives to participate. ECX said 25 cooperatives had bought the bid document, but only 19 made offers.

Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA), the largest coffee trade association in the world  has certified the Ethiopian based METAD/Kabu Coffee Quality Control Laboratory, the Ethiopian company announced yesterday. The laboratory is the first privately-owned African laboratory to be certified by the SCAA.

According to the company's press statement, sent to PANA, the Laboratory, equipped with the state-of-the-art coffee tasting technology, was certified on 17 May, 2013, after a team of SCAA experts, including Mr. Skip Finley, a Director on the SCAA Board, and Mr. Marty Curtis, a Coffee Quality Institute Instructor, inspected the laboratory same day.

The Ethiopian Roads Authority announced that it has completed the  76km Maytsemri-Dima asphalt concrete road in Tigray State. The  road is part of the Maytsemri-Dima-FiyelWuha-Abadi-Hawzen-Firewoyni road project. The construction took more than 534.4 million Ethiopian Birr, according to communication directorate of the Authority.

The Ethiopian government covered the full cost for construction of the road. A local contractor was awarded the project and the construction of the road is completed two months ahead of its original schedule, the directorate told Ethiopian News Agency on Saturday.