Increased orders from Tanzania and Rwanda lifted exports of Kenyans goods to the six-nation East African Community (EAC) market to a four-year high in the period to September. Kenyan traders earned Sh102.69 in the nine-month period, representing a growth of Sh5.60 billion or 5.77 percent compared by the same period a year ago. This is the highest level of receipts from the bloc in the January-September period since Sh104.29 billion was recorded in 2016. It signals improving trade ties between Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Exports to Rwanda surged Sh3.38 billion, or 25.06 percent, to nearly Sh16.89 billion, while orders from Tanzania climbed Sh2.25 billion, or 10.12 percent, to Sh24.43 billion, data collated by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) show. Sales to landlocked Uganda, Kenya’s largest trading partner, increased a measly Sh901.3 million, or 1.95 percent, to Sh47.02 billion, while Burundi bought Sh5.18 billion goods — Sh156.4 million or 3.12 percent growth year-on-year. Exports to South Sudan, which has been ravaged by years of civil strife, dropped Sh1.08 billion to Sh9.18 billion, the KNBS data shows. This snaps a trend in recent years where Kenyan factories have struggled to grow exports to regional markets, largely due to tariff and non-tariff barriers fuelled by mistrust and unresolved trade disputes, particularly with Dar es Salaam and, in some isolated cases, Kampala. “If Kenya is to industrialise and really be a manufacturing powerhouse in the region, we need to have our own four-band tariff. This is zero for (importation of) raw...

Namibia has become the eighth country to ratify the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) Agreement moving the region closer to having a fully operational agreement this year. Six more countries are required for the agreement to enter into force. Tripartite Coordinator at COMESA Secretariat, Dr Seth Gor confirmed in Lusaka that seven more countries from the EAC-COMESA-SADC are at advanced stages of ratifying the important document which will spur intra-regional trade. “We are optimistic that the remaining six countries will ratify the Agreement and we can have it fully operational this year,” said Dr Gor. He has also revealed that the Republic of Burundi deposited its instrument of ratification in November 2019. The TFTA is a building block for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and its aim is to gradually reduce the tariffs for all goods traded in the bloc to zero percent. The TFTA is focusing on three pillars, Market Integration, Industrial Development and Infrastructure Development.  These three areas have been prioritised to support the regional economic integration efforts in the region and the continent. Other Member States that have so far ratified the TFTA Agreement are Egypt, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, Botswana and Burundi. The TFTA was launched in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt on 10 June 2015 and signed by 22 of the original 26 countries covered by the deal. Tunisia, Somalia and South Sudan have since joined the configuration, bringing the total membership to 29 countries. These countries together represent 53 percent of the African Union membership, 60...

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w88zYmbCfk[/embed] Kenya and Uganda have long enjoyed good trade relations. But in Busia at the border of the two countries, Kenyans traders have taken the relationship a notch higher, finding handsome returns while shunning business environment back at home.

THE journey to an East African Community (EAC) political confederation is taking shape as experts are now engaged in consultations in Burundi. The constitutional experts are holding national stakeholders consultations as they go forth in preparations to draft the EAC Political Confederation Constitution that is expected to get completed by 2022. The EAC Secretariat says the consultations that started on Tuesday in Bujumbura, Gitega, Ngozi and Makamba were launched on Wednesday by President Pierre Nkurunziza and are being conducted under the leadership of Dr Benjamin Odoki, the Ugandan retired Chief Justice. The exercise goes on until January 20th. “The objective of the consultations is to obtain stakeholders’ views on their interests and other key issues that will better inform the drafting of a model political confederation and subsequently a confederation constitution in line with the principle of a people-centred Community,” said Ambassador Liberat Mfumukeko, the EAC Secretary General. The national stakeholders’ consultations are also expected to enhance awareness on the ongoing constitutional making process for transforming the EAC into a political confederation, as well as prepare the public in general to give their inputs into the draft constitution once it will be drafted. “National Stakeholders’ consultations will ensure participation of EAC citizens in the integration process and particularly the political federation pillar,” said Ambassador Mfumukeko. The drafting of the EAC political confederation constitution is being undertaken by a team of constitutional experts nominated by the EAC partner states. The 18-member team is chaired by Justice Odoki. It will be passed...

[embed]https://youtu.be/arz5l_mBDag[/embed] The Great Lakes Private Sector Forum partnership has been launched in Kampala today with the United Nations saying it will set the pace for sustainable regional integration through cross-border trade. Dr Rosa Malango, the UNDP Resident coordinator says that it should also require safe movement of people and goods as well as public and private sector investments. Source: NTV

Deputy Minister for Trade and Industries, Eng Stella Manyanya gave the remarks here yesterday when launching the trade research and capacity building programme jointly implemented by REPOA and International Institute for Social Studies of Erasmus University (ISS). “We have a number of bilateral arrangements, which collectively provide Tanzania with benefits from duty free, quota free arrangement or a waiver to minor customs charges imposed by industrial countries” said the deputy minister Adding “Their dividends are all to abundant to see, with the value of our exports increasing in recent years, recording annual growth of 11.9 per cent to 9,534.4 million US dollar in the year ending November 2019” However, she said, despite such developments, there has been a worrying decline in the value of traditional goods, mainly agriculture-based which provide for the livelihoods of large proportions of the population. “Our traditional exports fell by 21.4 per cent to 740.3 million US dollar in 2019, despite improvements in our coffee, cotton and sisal agro-industries” said Eng Manyanya Thus, he said, evidence-based research as the one that aimed at strengthen the capacity of policy makers, exporters and trade associations to review trade and related economic policies to promote trade competitiveness and diversification for widen trade opportunities are vital. She said the government will continue to put in place enabling environment for research organisations to carry out independent, inline with professional ethics, regulations and national laws. Eng Manyanya commended European Union among other development partners for their continued support for only in capacity...

Toward the end of the last decade, globalization – the lowering of barriers to cross-border flows of goods, services, investment, and information – came under severe pressure. Populist politicians in many countries accused others of various economic wrongs and pushed to rewrite trade agreements. Developing countries have argued for decades that the rules governing international trade are profoundly unfair. But why are similar complaints now emanating from the developed countries that established most of those rules? A simple but inadequate explanation is “competition.” In the 1960s and 1970s, industrialized countries focused on opening foreign markets for their goods and set the rules accordingly. Since then, the tide has turned. Emerging economies, especially China, got a lot better at producing goods; and the old rules dictate that developed countries must keep their markets open to the now-more-productive producers from elsewhere. To a cynical observer, developed countries’ current efforts to rewrite the rules look like an attempt not to level the playing field, but to thwart competition. One reason why emerging-market producers are competitive is that they pay workers less (typically because those workers are less productive). Hence, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, the renegotiated NAFTA) would limit Mexico’s advantage by requiring that 40-45% of automobile components be made by workers earning at least $16 per hour (by 2023). It also mandates a variety of labour protections, including stronger union representation for Mexican workers, which will be monitored by US inspectors. What looks like a good deal for Mexican workers imposed by...

By CORRESPONDENT, MOMBASA, Kenya, Jan 15 – The commissioning of the Lamu Port, a crucial facility in the Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor project, hangs in the balance as Kenya awaits the commitment of regional leaders to grace the event. The port was set to be commissioned in December, but the date was later vacated in a bid to ensure regional Heads of State attend the commissioning. Berth number 1 at the Lamu Port had been completed at the time. Berth 2 and 3 are scheduled to the completed this year. Next month, a large ship operated by Mersk Shipping Line, will dock at Lamu Port, Macharia said. Transport Cabinet Secretary James Macharia on Tuesday joined Ethiopian Ambassador to Kenya Meles Alam and South Sudan’s Undersecretary in the Ministry of Transport Capt David Martin to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on LAPSSET, the CS remaining noncommittal on the commissioning of the project. “Lamu Port is a regional project that was launched by the three head of states of Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan in March 2012. As a country, we cannot go back and commission it on our own. We want the same head of states to be present during commissioning,” Macharia said, declining to give a date for the official opening. Ambassador Alam allayed fears Ethiopia, having signed a peace deal with Eritrea in 2018, might backtrack from the LAPSSET project. “However, our presence in this meeting testifies the full commitment the Ethiopian government has towards implementation of...

President Uhuru Kenyatta will in mid next month launch the first berth in Lamu Port, Transport Cabinet Secretary James Macharia announced yesterday. Speaking in Mombasa, Mr Macharia said the first ship - owned by Maersk Shipping Line - would also dock at the port during the official launch to be graced by up to five heads of state.“This is a continental project. We postponed to give guests from even South Africa an opportunity to attend,” he said during a regional ministerial meeting on Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport (Lapsset) project.Macharia said construction of second and third berths would be completed by December. “We are addressing the security challenges to facilitate the completion of the project.” Last week, more than 1,000 construction works at Lamu port were suspended after Al Shabaab militants attacked a United States military base at Manda Bay airstrip, 10km north of the port.The invasion at the military base took place days after the militants also attacked three buses at the Nyongoro area on the Garsen-Lamu road and killed three passengers. A multi-agency security team is currently combing the expansive Boni Forest believed to be the militants' hiding ground.Last week, the China Communications Construction Company, Ltd, which is building the first three berths at the port, sent its employees home, saying it could not guarantee their security. Yesterday Macharia said work had resumed and construction of two more berths and roads, including the Lamu-Garsen highway, would be completed as scheduled.He was addressing the regional ministerial meeting on the Lapsset corridor,...

According to their latest report, Foresight Africa: Top priorities for the continent 2020-2030, only Senegal, Rwanda and Niger economies will grow faster than Uganda between 2020—2024. President Yoweri Museveni commissioning the Isimba hydro power dam in March last year in Kamuli District. Investment in infrastructure is expected to be one of the drivers of economic growth in Uganda The Brookings Institution, an American think tank, has projected that Uganda will be among the fastest-growing economies on the African continent in the coming decade. According to their latest report, Foresight Africa: Top priorities for the continent 2020-2030, only Senegal, Rwanda and Niger economies will grow faster than Uganda between 2020—2024. The report projects that Uganda will grow by an average of 7.2% annually during the period. This is almost twice the Sub-Saharan Africa growth average of 3.9%. Senegal is expected to grow the fastest at 8.3%, followed by Rwanda at 7.9% and Niger 7.3%. Brookings did not make specific mention of what the drivers of Uganda’s growth will be, but other economists point to the ongoing infrastructure investment, first oil and greater regional integration as the key drivers of growth in the coming years. According to the Brookings Institution, Uganda was not among the top 10 fastest growing economies in Africa between 2015 and 2019. Mali was the 10th fastest at 5.4% while Ethiopia was the fastest at 8.7%. Economists react The report drew mixed reactions from local economists. Makerere University’s Fred Muhumuza was sceptical about the projections and suggested they may...