2merkato

Ethiopia is to replace the Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Proclamation in effect for the last three years with a new draft legislation presented to the House of Representatives this week.

The new law is designed to enact mechanism more severe than the ones in place at this time to control financial institutions as well as non-financial businesses and professionals such as lawyers and accountants.

The draft law requires financial institutions as other non designated bodies to identify a clients potential connection to criminal activities as part of the effort to combat money laundering and financing of terrorism.

A draft bill that will allow the government to undertake door to door land and real property registration will be tabled to the Council of Ministers in the coming January. The registration project is designed to a identify urban land resources and help protect citizens’ rights to land use by developing a complete cadastral map according to the draft bill.

If the bill is passed by the House of Representatives all urban residents will be required to register any property for which they have a land use right. The registration will include all immovable property constructed on the land and will conducted through presenting land deeds, or equivalent proof, to the government body assigned this responsibility.

A directive to implement the new Export Trade Duty Incentive Proclamation is expected to take effect in January of 2013. The new proclamation is intended to boost export oriented business.

It is expected that the new plan will be implemented beginning on the 9th of January, 2013. The directive will be implemented as announced by the government at the end of last month.

Government authorities held talks with various stakeholders in the sector on the day before the announcement. The Ministry of Industry also sent the amendment document to all stakeholders for further comment.

The Ethiopian Maritime Affairs Authority has designed a draft directive to penalize importers who are slow in processing their goods after arrival at ports. The directive will punish importers who fail to move their goods within 45 days of arrival.

If enacted the new directive will apply to goods transported through both uni-modal and multi-modal transport systems. The maritime authority has sent the proposed directive to the Ministry of Transport for comment before implementation.

The authority had expected to implement the directive at the beginning of the previous month but had to take longer to ensure that all parties involved had an awareness of the duties and responsibilities entailed by the directive. The authority was thus holding discussions with the Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority, the Ethiopian Shipping Lines & Logistic Service Enterprise, and the National Bank of Ethiopia.