Despite the incident, Huawei has been picked by Ethio Telecom, a state-owned telecom company, to roll out a high-speed 4G network across the country's capital, Addis Ababa, as part of a $1.6 billion deal signed earlier this year with Huawei Technologies and ZTE.
In October this year, Ethiopian tax authority ERCA said it would confiscate the equipment and slap the company with a tax avoidance charge, after the equipment had been held in a warehouse for almost a year. The equipment was imported into the country toward the end of 2012 after Ethio Telecom made known plans to expand its network in the East African country.
Ethio Telecom is the sole telecommunication services provider in Ethiopia and the only operator in the East Africa region that is still under tight state control. The Ethiopian government has refused to open up its telecom sector to private investors.
According to a Ethiopian government official, Ethiopia and China became involved in diplomatic talks over seizure of the equipment. The two countries are said to have agreed that it was important to maintain good bilateral relations by allowing Huawei to take back the equipment.
However, the Chinese company has also been ordered by ERCA to pay five percent of the total tax due on the equipment as well as warehouse charges incurred over the past one year.
"We had planned to slap the company with tax avoidance charge and confiscate the equipment. But the two countries got involved in the issue and it was agreed that it was important to maintain cordial bilateral relations," an ERCA source said on condition of anonymity. He said China has been a major funder of several ICT projects in Ethiopia, including the $1.5 billion Millennium project aimed at creating a fiber-optic network across the country.
source: www.pcadvisor.co
No comments:
Post a Comment