The East African Community has developed a new scorecard to monitor progress and address challenges facing integration of the five-nation bloc.
Launched on Monday, the EAC Common Market Scorecard 2016 will focus on the progress made towards the implementation of free movement of goods, capital and services, and identifies a number of barriers to intra-regional trade.
It further recommends a raft of measures for individual partner states meant to promote regional prosperity.
This is likely to boost the seven year-old East Africa Common Market under the EAC Treaty, whose implementation has been slowed down by noncommittal member states and non-tariff barriers.
The World Bank and Trade Mark East Africa supported initiative follows up on the first scorecard developed in 2014. It focuses on monitoring and stimulating implementation of the freedoms and rights enshrined in the EAC Common Market Protocol.
They include free movement of goods, persons and Labour. It also paves the way for the right of establishment, residence, free movement of services and free movement of capital.
East African Community and Labour Cabinet Secretary Phyllis Kandie expressed concern over the steady decline in intra EAC trade, whose value dropped to $5.1 billion (Sh523.5billion) in 2015, from $5.6 billion (Sh574.8 billion) in 2014 and $5.8 billion (Sh595.4billion) in 2013.
She attributed the decline to “weak capacity within individual EAC partner states to resolve most of the non tariff barriers”.
Kenya’s EAC Integration Principal Secretary Betty Maina called for renewed efforts in promoting intra-EAC trade.
The region has a market of over 150 million people. EAC Gross Domestic Product was $ 146 billion (Sh14.986 trillion) in 2015, before the effective entry of South Sudan into the bloc.
Source: The Star

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