Kampala. Job creation and transfer of technology must be part of the outcome of the negotiation between the EAC countries and the US, an analyst has cautioned.
Currently, EAC member states are developing a regional negotiation model which will be used to engage the US on matters pertaining to trade and investment within the region as well as enhancing trade between the two parties.
Generally, the EAC-US Trade and Investment Partnership is an initiative that seeks to support the EAC economic integration as well as enhancing the EAC-US trade and investment relationship.
According to Mr Francis Mangeni, a trade analyst and the director of trade customs and monetary affairs at Comesa, the five EAC member states, among them Uganda, must ensure that the agreement has a provision that regulates the entry of investors into the country.
Mr Mangeni said investors should come here (in EAC) not on their terms but according to the conditions of the regional governments. Without such restriction some investors, he said, could end up messing the country then pack their bags and walk away the way they came in- scot free.
Mr Mangeni was speaking last week in Entebbe during a regional stakeholders consultative meeting.
The Southern and Eastern African Trade, Information and Negotiations Institute (Seatini) country director, Jane Nalunga, said: “We must know what we want and always negotiate on the basis of what we want—and not from the point of weakness.”
Efforts—facilitating local trade.
“In negotiations there is a need for strategy. And those things mentioned above must be in the EAC model to guide the engagement with the US. And they must not be compromised,” Mr Mangeni later said in a press conference after the launch of SEATINI assessment study report on the draft EAC model investment treaty.
Negotiation model
Developing a model. Ms Basemera Peace, a regional expert on treaty and negotiations revealed that currently a model for negotiation is being drafted before embarking on a trade negotiation with the US.
Source: Daily Monitor

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