Association expects national ID to advance business services

The Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association (ECCSA) said Friday that the National ID Program will be helpful for the business community to get services pertaining to logistics and tax in an easy way.

The National ID program will also be crucial in prevention of crimes and swift exchange of information, according to Engineer Melaku Ezezew, President of the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association (ECCSA).

Melaku said that the Nation ID will have an immense role to ensure fairness to businesses while the “Identity Day” was observed on Friday at Sheraton Addis Hotel.  “Such benefits will have also a mammoth contribution to the economy”.

During the Identity Day the National ID Program has been introduced to the private sector. The National ID Day was co-hosted by ECCSA and National ID Program.

He went on saying that the national ID will immensely benefit to expedite banking, insurance, logistics, customs and other Sectoral services.

Though there’re are efforts being exerted at the Ministry of Revenues and National Bank of Ethiopia to identify the business community such efforts are not enough, he said, adding that, “Such imperfections have been exposing to sabotage, redundant activities, and abuse of the governmental working system”.

Ministry of Trade and Regional Integration (MoTRI) and Ministry of Revenue have modernized some of their services by making it digital. “However, all these services will be faster if anyone gets a single ID,” as Melaku puts it. “It will be difficult for the government to get reliable information otherwise”.

Meanwhile, Teferi Fikre, Head of the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Affairs Minister on his part said that the National ID will be used to craft plans, bring structural transformation and ensure good governance.

He also mentioned that inclusiveness and wealth distribution as other merits of the national ID.

Yodahie Arayasilassie, CEO of the National ID Program Ethiopia said that guaranteeing the safety of citizens and service providers are the major objectives behind the program.

The objective of the National ID Program is to realize a robust, forward looking and digital ID system. The vision is to “Build a foundational identification platform for Ethiopia, proving that an individual is who he/she claims to be, in a secure, electronic and sustainable way, to support individual identity use cases for both citizens and legal residents of Ethiopia by 2025.”