IN a bid to boost cross border trade, the government through the Ministry of Industry and Trade has introduced a special procedure to deal with Non-Tax Barriers (NTBs). The Ministry’s Deputy Minister, Eng. Stella Manyanya said the new procedure will enable traders to easily access required services from the government and its institutions. She said the government is committed to ensure changes in the cross border trade and that the measures will help to boost trade and the country’s economy at large. She mentioned the borders that are set to be linked to the new system as Kasumulu border- Tanzania and Malawi, Tunduma border, Tanzania and Zambia, Mabamba border- Tanzania and Burundi, Horohoro border- Tanzania and Kenya, Rusumo border- Tanzania and Rwanda , Kabanga border- Tanzania and Burundi, Mtambaaswala border- Tanzania and Mozambique, Tarakea border- Tanzania-Kenya and Mutukula border, Tanzania- Uganda. She mentioned the institutions that are directly involved in cross border trade as Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), Department of Immigration; Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS), Tanzania Medicines and Medical Devices Authority (TMDA), Tanzania Atomic Energy Commission (TAEC), Plant Health Services Unit, Departments of Natural Resources and Tourism, Department of Livestock and Fisheries, District Councils and Tanzania Business Development and Tanzania Trade Development (Tan Trade). Source: Daily News

Kenya improved marginally as one of the top countries in Africa to invest in, according to the Where to Invest in Africa 2020 report. Having placed fifth in the survey during the previous edition of the report, Kenya moved up one place to fourth on the study undertaken by South Africa’s Rand Merchant Bank. “The above 5 percent expected growth rates, helped by favourable weather and political reconciliation after 2017’s disputed elections, has propelled Kenya one spot higher than 2019,” the report reads in part. Kenya’s movement saw it go ahead of Ethiopia, who had placed fourth in the Where to Invest in Africa 2019 report. Ethiopia underwent a huge tumble, falling to ninth on the ranking. Recently, Ethiopia was reported to have pipped Kenya as the top destination for foreign direct investment in East Africa, reigning in Ksh700 billion last year. For Kenya, the Where to Invest in Africa 2020 report continued to say, “The economy benefits from diversity as well as a sustained expansion in consumer demand, urbanisation, East African Community (EAC) integration, structural reforms and investment in infrastructure, including an oil pipeline, railways, ports and power generation.” Egypt continued to top the ranking of African countries to invest in for the fourth consecutive year. The report said that enhanced government programmes, as well as improved investment from the private sector, have continued to push the North African nation’s attractiveness. “The enormity of the market paired with a sophisticated business sector relative to other countries makes Egypt the...

Tax directors and commissioner generals from across the continent are in Kampala to lobby for the creation and adoption of one single window system as the African Continental Free Trade Area plans to roll out next year. According to the AfCFTA, the single window system could reduce transaction time and costs especially in the process of documentation of exports and imports across the continent. Speaking at the opening of the five-day 11th African Union Directors conference at the Commonwealth Resort, Munyonyo, Rossette Nyirikindi Katungye, the advisor on Regional Integration, Office of the Chairperson at AU, said intra-African trade is expected to grow when the tax bodies deepen their linkages. “The first thing is to have clear rules on how we are going to trade and some of the contentious issues include quick dispute resettlements, clear rules of origin and reduction of non-tax barriers. All these will reduce the cost of doing business and increase our trading as Africa,” she said. The conference is under the theme ‘The Entry into Force of the Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA): Implications to African Customs Administrations.’ Dicksons Kateshumbwa, the commissioner for Customs at Uganda Revenue Authority, said some issues have been resolved to promote intra-Africa trade. “We are discussing issues of borders, tonnage, compliance, capacity building, gender, among others; the recommendations will be tabled before the director generals,” he said. According to Kateshumbwa, just like Uganda has the East African single window system, countries hope the single window system can...

Since 1981, the world has been observing the International day of peace. The day is dedicated to world peace, and specifically the temporary ceasefires and non-violence. The theme of the first International Day of Peace was the “Right to peace of people.” The more I think about the theme of the first observance in 1981 and the theme for 2019; I am reminded that world peace has not yet arrived on our doorstep. Is it because human nature is just drawn to conflicts, or because humanity will never co-operate or is it that we are trying to push others to change, yet we can’t change ourselves. As a social justice activist, always writing proposals for peacebuilding interventions, or convening meetings with other peace actors, trying to seek creative ways of ending wars and conflicts in our beautiful world, I am always pondering if it's naïve to believe that war might one day become a thing of the past? Well, I can only hold on to the hope that my children and their children will live in a world that is keen and deliberate on building peace. Recently, as I got thinking deeply about the concept of peace or the emergence of the term “peacebuilding”, I slipped into Immanuel Kant’s essay titled “Perpetual Peace”, which delved into the Economic Peace theory. Kant argues that there are two basic ways in which economics may contribute to international peace. First, increasing international interdependence through trade and finance raises the potential costs of war...

Burundi MPs unanimously voted on Thursday, September 19, 2019, the bill ratifying the Republic of Burundi’s agreement to create the Tripartite Zone of Free Trade Agreement (ZLET) between the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The Minister of Trade, Industry and Tourism, Jean-Marie Niyokindi, explained the reasons for this free trade area before the MPs. Niyokindi said that this free trade area is aimed at developing and proposes to create inter-regional cooperation between the three regional communities based on three pillars, namely market integration, industrial development, and infrastructure development. This agreement will allow Burundi to have access to the market of the 26 countries of the tripartite region and to have a legal basis for continuing negotiations and seeking funding for projects and tripartite programs of interest, he added. Burundi MPs also analyzed and adopted unanimously the draft law by the Republic of Burundi the amended Article 24, paragraph 2 of the Protocol establishing the Customs Union of the East African Community. This paragraph states that the committee shall be composed of nine qualified and competent members in the areas of trade, customs, and law. The wording of this paragraph establishing the Customs Union of the EAC is such that the Trade Remedies Committee is restricted and closed. In addition, it does not allow a new country that joins this community to be represented in this body. This means, according to Minister Niyokindi, that the Appeals Committee...

The government now wants to harmonise the East Africa Community (EAC) customs regulations with those of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) so as to eliminate non-tariff barriers. The Minister for Works, Transport and Communication engineer Isack Kamwelwe said over the weekend when opening the Tanzania Truck Owners Association (TATOA) annual general meeting held in Dar es Salaam. He said the move further aimed at eliminating other challenges including vehicle weight control act and its regulation that initially mentioned as one of the big challenge. Furthermore, the move will attract more volume of tonnages and in so doing increase more revenues to the nation. Kamwelwe said upon completion it will enable smooth facilitation of transporters from the country to the SADC region which has a huge potential market. “Harmonization of EAC laws to cope with those in SADC was also a topic in our recently SADC meeting held in Dar es Salaam. We are on the process of ensuring the law and regulation governing trade in the EAC are harmonized to facilitate smooth trade in the region,”he said. He however reaffirmed the government's commitment to continue collaborating with transporters reminding them to be abiding by-laws to avoid delays and unnecessary disturbances. In another development, Kamwelwe said the government has set fund to build    bigger tanks that can store fuels in bulky to reduce time ship docking to offload fuel and increase the capacity to store tonnage of fuels He said the process moves concurrently with expansion of depth of...

NAIROBI, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- A key Kenyan dry port which was expanded using Chinese funding is boosting the east African nation's international trade, a port official said. Kenya Ports Authority (KPA), which owns the Nairobi Inland Container Depot (ICD), said that the dry port has enabled bulk cargo from the port of Mombasa to be transported efficiently through the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) to the hinterland. With Chinese funding, the dry port has expanded the container traffic of the ICD to reduce congestion at the port of Mombasa, ICD principal operations officer Nicholas Tendwa told Xinhua in a recent interview. The freight lines of the 472 km Mombasa to Nairobi SGR project terminates at the ICD and has modern equipment from China that has improved the efficiency of the operations of the facility. The dry port was established in 1984 in Nairobi as the key destination of most imported goods and its role was enhanced in May 2017 after the completion of the SGR in order to reduce congestion at the port of Mombasa and bring freight services closer to clients. The state-of-the-art inland cargo handling facility that was upgraded by China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) was expected to decongest the port of Mombasa while lowering the cost of transporting goods. Tendwa noted that international traders now prefer to collect their cargo from the inland dry port rather than from the Mombasa seaport. Tendwa revealed that the inland port is also an ideal pickup point for transit goods headed...

Despite the current pessimism surrounding the future of Kenya Airways, the International Air Transport Association forecasts more than double growth for the country’s air transport sector in the next 20 years. According to IATA, the sector will grow by 249 percent over the period if the current trends are maintained, contributing $11.3 billion annually to Kenya’s GDP and supporting an estimated 859,000 jobs by 2037. BUSY ROUTE The findings were made in the Value of Aviation Report for Kenya that was launched during IATA’s Regional Aviation Forum hosted by Kenya Airways on September 17. The report looked at the total contribution of jobs and spending generated by airlines and their supply chain; trade and tourism flows; investments by users of all airlines serving a particular country as well as the city pair connections that make these flows possible. According to IATA, the air transport sector contributed $3.2 billion to the economy, amounting to 4.6 percent of the country’s GDP in 2017. Source: The East African

Nairobi. The World Bank’s Logistics Performance Survey of 2018, ranked Tanzania at 67 globally, a point behind Ivory Coast, which was ranked position 66 in the process highlighting the challenges in the logistics supply chain. The index further placed South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda and Ivory Coast as the top 4 best-performing countries in Africa, while Somalia, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, and Zimbabwe took the bottom four positions. In the wake of this, today September 23, in Nairobi,  Africa Logistics Properties (ALP), a  modern warehousing solutions company hosted a supply chain networking event to celebrate its second anniversary since the completion of  ALP North at Tatu City’s Industrial Park. Speaking at the event, Africa Logistics Properties CEO Richard Hough said since setting up operations in Kenya, they have noticed various challenges in East Africa’s Supply Chain ecosystem. “We are delighted to have our first supply chain breakfast event as a way of creating a dialogue to solve some of the key challenges many business’s experiences within the Supply Chain ecosystem as well as align key international best practices that are relevant and can be applicable to the East African Region,” said Mr. Hough He further added, “With ALP logistics centres we are able to provide a key part of the solution and improve distribution in East Africa by streamlining the supply chain and logistics processes. Through eliminating shipping and transportation challenges, establishing better ways of storing goods and the effective use of technology.” Africa Logistics Properties’s flagship project 'ALP Nairobi North’ is...

Despite the current pessimism surrounding the future of Kenya Airways, the International Air Transport Association forecasts more than double growth for the country’s air transport sector in the next 20 years. According to IATA, the sector will grow by 249 per cent over the period if the current trends are maintained, contributing $11.3 billion annually to Kenya’s GDP and supporting an estimated 859,000 jobs by 2037. BUSY ROUTE The findings were made in the Value of Aviation Report for Kenya that was launched during IATA’s Regional Aviation Forum hosted by Kenya Airways on September 17. The report looked at the total contribution of jobs and spending generated by airlines and their supply chain; trade and tourism flows; investments by users of all airlines serving a particular country as well as the city pair connections that make these flows possible. According to IATA, the air transport sector contributed $3.2 billion to the economy, amounting to 4.6 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2017. Kenya received 4.8 million foreign passengers in 2017, which supported 410,000 jobs. About $0.9 billion was spent directly by passengers, which supported 15,000 jobs. Another $0.6 billion was spent on the industry’s supply chain, supporting 96,000 jobs. Tourists who arrived by air spent $1.6 billion, supporting 257,000 jobs in the hospitality sector. According to the report, Africa remains the biggest source of air passengers to Kenya, contributing 3.1 million passengers or 70 per cent of total visitors in 2017. Europe came next with 585,000 passengers followed by Asia-Pacific 284,000,...