Senate: plenary declares seven bills admissible

A plenary sitting held on Friday March 27, 2015, in Yaounde after the chairmen’s conference had admitted the bills.

A total of seven bills submitted Thursday March 26, 2015, at the Senate by the President of the Republic have been judged admissible for scrutiny by the House. The Chairmen’s conference which earlier held on March 26 admitted the bills before the latter were presented at the Plenary last Friday March 27, 2015, by the President of the Senate, Marcel Niat Njifenji.

After calling the House to order a few minutes past midday on Friday, the President of the Senate read out the seven bills which had earlier been submitted in the National Assembly. The first four bills as read out by Marcel Niat Njifenji, in the presence of the Vice Prime Minister, Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge with Relations with the Assemblies, Amadou Ali, deal with economic issues while one is on security and two on communication.

The bills which will be scrutinised by members of the Senate include; the bill to ratify the Protocol on the Preferential Tariff Scheme for the establishment of the Trade Preferential System among member countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference adopted in Istanbul, Turkey.

The second bill is to authorise the President of the Republic to ratify the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Convention on mutual administrative assistance in tax matters in 1988, as amended by the Protocol of 27 May, 2010.

The OECD Convention that Cameroon signed on January 27, 2014, is a multilateral instrument with the two-fold objective to enable the exchange of tax information in order to combat international tax evasion and avoidance, and to provide the possibility of assistance in the recovery of taxes abroad. The ratification will help boost tax yields, hence the country’s resources.

Meanwhile, Senators will also scrutinise the bill to ratify the Ordinance No. 2014/002 of 10 December 2014 to amend and supplement certain provisions of the 2014 Finance Law of the Republic of Cameroon as well as ratify Ordinance No. 2015/001 of 6 February 2015 to amend and supplement certain provisions of the 2015 Finance Law of Cameroon.

Away from economic issues, the Senate will also examine the bill to authorise the President of the Republic to ratify the cooperation accord in security issues between the Government of Cameroon and the Government of the Republic of Turkey, signed on June19, 2014 in Ankara, Turkey.

On the communication domain, the Senators will also dissect the bill on Electronic Communication and another governing audio-visual communication in Cameroon.