The Council of Ministers, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD), approved Ethiopia’s first unified trade policy last week, ending a three-year deliberation period to fill a decades-long regulatory vacuum. This institutional milestone mandates the Ministry of Trade & Regional Integration (MoTRI) to overhaul consumer protection frameworks, specifically requiring a rigorous revision of the Trade Competition and Consumer Protection Proclamation to eliminate market distortions and the proliferation of sub-standard goods. The policy identifies "regulatory complexity" as a primary bottleneck and seeks to mitigate trade costs by digitizing registration and licensing procedures. To resolve the significant gap between producer and consumer prices, strategic interventions include the expansion of "Sunday Markets" to facilitate direct linkages and the development of modernized market infrastructure. These reforms are anchored in a macroeconomic commitment to protect purchasing power by managing high inflation and narrowing the disparities between official and parallel exchange rates.

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