Trade experts from the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) are meeting in Nairobi this week to discuss ways to address industrial disparities in the region.

The experts said the implementation of the COMESA Industrial Policy, which was adopted by COMESA Council of Ministers in 2015, is expected to provide the pathway towards addressing the growth gaps that exist on the supply-side such as low-value addition, low employment rates and weak cross-border trade volumes.

Betty Maina, Principal Secretary in charge of industry at Kenya’s Ministry of Industry, Trade and Cooperatives who opened the meeting late on Tuesday said a robust GDP growth of near 6.5 percent in the region has not led to economic transformation.

Maina said this disparity has resulted from preoccupation with low value-added products and trading in primary products and natural resources.

“Despite regional integration being of special importance in Africa, COMESA member states still trade more than 90 percent with other parts of the world due to lack of industrial diversification and products’ complementarity among themselves,” said Maina.

Maina said the affected products are mainly those with few forward and backward linkages to the rest of the economy.

The three-day meeting will thus discuss the draft action plan of the implementation on the COMESA Industrial Policy and review the COMESA regional guidelines on the local content policy.

“The low level of intra-COMESA trade, which has not broken the 10 percent threshold of total exports over the years, is a reflection of a low level of industrialization,” she said.

Kipyego Cheluget, assistant secretary general of COMESA, said energy costs in the region was a major impediment to the expansion of the manufacturing sector.

Cheluget said the total installed capacity for electric power in the 21 COMESA countries is about 90,800 megawatts compared to Brazil with over 150,000 megawatts.

“We are however beginning to see significant improvements in the generation capacity with the expected coming on-stream major power generation projects in Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia,” he said.

He added that the construction of Zambia-Tanzania-Kenya interconnector and the Ethiopia-Kenya interconnector will facilitate power trade between the southern and the northern power pools.