THE East African Community Secretary General, Dr Richard Sezibera, has challenged the private sector to play a more active role in anti-corruption crusade saying they are seen to be facilitating the vice rather than fighting it.

Dr Sezibera said in Dar es Salaam last week that he was concerned that many operators in the private sector set budgets under different names, for bribes, something which indicated that they were facilitating the vice. “We are concerned the private sector have budget lines called facilitation.

This is a serious problem,” he said at a meeting with Chief Executive Officers of business enterprises organised to discuss issues affecting trade and investments in the region.

He said the impact of corruption on commercial interests was immense as it adds 10 per cent or more to the cost of doing business. “It is a serious problem and unless the private sector deal with this issue as an industry, we will end up at the bottom”.

The crusade against corruption was an area the EAC community had not made good progress, he said noting that private sector participation in the crusade against corruption is key to success.

According to the United Nations, corruption adds 10 per cent or more to the cost of doing business in many parts of the world and as much as 25 per cent to the cost of public procurement.

Corruption also impedes economic growth, distorts competition, and creates serious legal and reputational risks. Dr Sezibera said there were progress in improving the business climate in the region with the private sector being the driving force in deepening the regional integration process.

He said there were good progress on harmonization of domestic taxes in the region noting Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda had already ratified the EAC Agreement Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement and Tanzania was preparing to do the same.

He said the region had managed to resolve 70 non-tarrif trade barriers (NTBs) across the region and work on elimination of those pending was continuing.

He said the East Africa Legislative Assembly had in March this year passed the EAC Elimination of Non-Tariff Bill, 2015, a new development that the private sector need to utilize to further the efforts towards addressing the NTBs.

“We expect the private sector to utilize this development to ensure the removal of all existing NTBs and at the same time ensure no other NTBs are introduced,” he said.

Dr Sezibera said he hoped that EAC member states would fast-track the assent to the bill to make sure the long awaited law became operational.

On the Customs Union, he said the integration process had been a great success with the region most recently benefited through enhanced trade through Common External Tariff (CET).

“A good example is that goods, which meet the criteria of rules of origin, have been moving across borders without paying taxes.

Most importantly, Trade is now at 23 per cent over and above the intra African trade figure of 12 per cent,” he said.

“There has been a 300 per cent increase in the value of trade from two billion US Dollars in 2005 to six billion US Dollars in 2014.

These numbers, coupled with the combined EAC GDP of 110.3 billion US Dollars with an average annual rate growth, of 2.6 per cent makes our region a formidable trade and economic bloc.”

Source: All Africa

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