10 June 2009 – Ethiopia Biometrics project

Face Technologies implements fingerprint-based taxpayer identification for Ethiopia
By Dereje Berhanu

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - The Ethiopian Customs and Tax Authority (CTA) has commenced with a project for fingerprint-based taxpayer ID system numbers. The new fingerprint identification system has started in Addis Ababa and will continue to towns in regional states.

Mr. Melaku Fenta, CTA General Director told journalist this week that the authority plans to collect 1.5 million taxpayers’ fingerprints within eight months. According to the plan, the first phase will entail the registration of more than half million businessmen, civil servants and about 180,000 government university students enrolled in the cost sharing programmes.

Under the current TIN system, about 433,000 taxpayers have been registered across the nation. According to Ethiopian law a taxpayer has to have only one TIN number. “TIN duplication has created a problem in the national tax system that is why the authority came to the conclusion to use biometric system which does not allow duplication to take place”, said Melaku.

Copy Cat Limited, a Kenyan firm, together with Face Technologies, a South African company has won the contract to provide CTA with biometric equipment to carry out the fingerprint taxpayer system with 66 million birr.

“The company has enormous experience in Africa and Asia. We will first use biometric registration within the tax system in Ethiopia and later on would move towards integrating it in other sectors in long term we envision a national identification card”, said Melaku