A plenary sitting yesterday April 1, 2015, in Yaounde acknowledged receipt of the bills already adopted by the Lower House.

The plenary sitting of the Senate yesterday received four bills from the National Assembly. The chairperson of yesterday’s plenary at the hemicycle, one of the Vice Presidents, Senator Sylvestre Naah Ondoa, called the House to order and announced the reception of four bills from the National Assembly.

The bills which were earlier adopted by the National Assembly this week, deals mainly with economic issues. The Bills as read out by the Vice President 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.

Also, the plenary sitting received 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.

Earlier yesterday morning, the four bills went through a thorough scrutiny by the members of the Finance and Budget Committee and those of the Foreign Affairs Committee with Finance Minister, Alamine Ousmane Mey presenting the merits of the bills to Cameroon’s emergence.