East African countries are dragging their feet on tax harmonisation because of concerns about tax sovereignty, failure to agree on a common excise policy, fear of losing revenue, and the difficulty of converging excise rates, given the differences in per capita income. A study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on the impact of EAC excise tax harmonisation recommends that in order to move faster on the matter, the EAC partners need to focus on key areas including procedures and administration, classification rules and definitions and remission schemes. Rajesh Shah, senior tax partner at PwC, said tax harmonisation need not necessarily result in the same tax rates and laws, but in processes that will enable the EAC partner states to eliminate barriers that hamper the free movement of goods, services and capital, and promote investment within the region. These freedoms are provided for in the EAC Treaty and Common Market Protocol. “We need common warehousing procedures, declaration and documentation for products destined for another partner state,” said Mr Shah. “This should only apply on products released for consumption and not consumed due to setbacks such as spoilage and expired products.” So far, only Customs duties have been harmonised by setting a common external tariff (CET) for imports into Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. Building the foundation Although the EAC faces challenges such as illicit trade and wide disparities in rates and structures, it should be possible to build the foundation of a harmonised excise tax system and secure long term growth in...

The East African Community’s dream of having a common e-East African passport for the citizens of its five member states will soon come to reality. Initially scheduled for release in November 2015, the e-passport was delayed as pending issues were ironed out. But from March this year, citizens from the trading bloc will be able to access the EAC e-passport, allowing easy movement within the community-a mandate of the EAC integration process. Its introduction will also be a milestone towards achieving harmonization in the region. EAC states plan on having their citizens use the new generation document for global travel too. Owora Richard Othieno said that launching the international EAC e-passport is on the agenda of the upcoming 17th Ordinary EAC Heads of State Summit. The EAC senior communication official was speaking ahead of the Summit on Tuesday. The Summit is set for February 29 and will be preceded by a meeting of the EAC Council of Ministers from February 22 to 27. Both will take place at the EAC Headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania. The EAC trading bloc includes Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania. Source: Footprint to Africa

The Swedish Government has pledged to continue supporting the East African Community (EAC) integration process. This pledge was made by Katarina Rangnitt, the Swedish Ambassador to Tanzania and the EAC, who said cooperation among the five EAC partner states was crucial to relations between Sweden and East Africa. The envoy was speaking after she presented her credentials to the EAC Secretary General Richard Sezibera at the EAC headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania, according to a statement from the regional bloc's secretariat. Sweden has over the past nine years disbursed financial support amounting to over $850,000 to the bloc, through the EAC Partnership Fund. Sezibera thanked the Swedish envoy for her government support to the community over the years noting that the Swedish support has been used for among other things the negotiations of the Economic Partnership Agreements between the EAC and the EU as well as boosting the health sector in the region. The Secretary General briefed Rangnit on the progress of the EAC integration saying the Community had made many achievements since the signing of the Treaty for the Establishment of the EAC on 30th November, 1999. He pointed out other achievements as the reduction of Non-Tariff Barriers to the free movement of goods, the convertibility of the Partner States national currencies and cooperation in the development of infrastructure. "Our infrastructure programmes are largely on track. Many of the One Stop Border Posts have been completed, and are being operationalised. I congratulate the Partner States for ratifying the One Stop...

ARUSHA, Tanzania, Feb. 16 (Xinhua) -- East African citizens will from March this year be able to access the East African Community (EAC) e-passports that will help ease their movement in the trading bloc, a senior official said on Tuesday. EAC's senior official in-charge of communication unit Owora Richard Othieno disclosed this here when speaking ahead the 17th Ordinary EAC Heads of State Summit set for February 29 in Tanzania's safari capital of Arusha. He said that among other things scheduled for the day, regional leaders will launch international EAC e-passport. The long-awaited New Generation e-East African Passport will be a major milestone towards achieving a harmonization in the region. The e-passport was scheduled for launch in November last year but was postponed to allow more time to airbrush pending issues on the travel document. The Summit is also expected to deliberate on a report on the verification exercise for the admission of the Republic of Somalia into the EAC. The Summit will be preceded by a meeting of the EAC Council of Ministers that will take place at the EAC Headquarters in Arusha on Feb. 22-27 The EAC trading bloc includes Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania. Source: Shanghai Daily

Egypt's new Ambassador to the Tanzania and the EAC, Mohammed Yasser Ala'Eldeen El Shawaf, said his country was eager to boost trade and technical cooperation Egypt has committed to improve ties with the East African Community. Presenting his credentials to the EAC Secretary General, Dr Richard Sezibera, at the EAC Headquarters in Arusha on Tuesday, Egypt's new Ambassador to the Tanzania and the EAC, Mohammed Yasser Ala'Eldeen El Shawaf, said his country was eager to boost trade and technical cooperation with the EAC Partner States. Welcoming the Egyptian ambassador, Dr. Sezibera described Egypt as an important trading partner for the EAC and praised its outstanding role in promoting negotiations for the Tripartite Free Trade Area (FTA) between the EAC, COMESA and SADC.  Dr Sezibera noted that the Tripartite FTA when fully implemented would move the African Continent from the margins of Global Trade, adding that it was a good basis for the Continental Free Trade Area envisioned by the African Union. The Secretary General thanked Egypt for making a tariff offer to the EAC and went on to request Egypt to encourage the other member states to negotiate as a bloc instead of doing so as separate entities saying this would hasten the operationalization of the Tripartite FTA. Source: New Vision

ARUSHA, Tanzania (Xinhua) -- East African citizens will from March this year be able to access the East African Community (EAC) e-passports that will help ease their movement in the trading bloc, a senior official has said. EAC’s senior official in-charge of communication unit Owora Richard Othieno disclosed this here when speaking ahead the 17th Ordinary EAC Heads of State Summit set for February 29 in Tanzania’s safari capital of Arusha. He said that among other things scheduled for the day, regional leaders will launch international EAC e-passport. The long-awaited New Generation e-East African Passport will be a major milestone towards achieving a harmonization in the region. The e-passport was scheduled for launch in November last year but was postponed to allow more time to airbrush pending issues on the travel document. The Summit is also expected to deliberate on a report on the verification exercise for the admission of the Republic of Somalia into the EAC. The Summit will be preceded by a meeting of the EAC Council of Ministers that will take place at the EAC Headquarters in Arusha on Feb. 22-27. The EAC trading bloc includes Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania. Source: Coast Week

Eastern Africa regional states should strengthen intra-regional trade and enact policies to reduce poverty among poor members of their societies to sustain economic growth. That was one of the key resolutions by experts at the 20th Intergovernmental Committee of Experts (ICE) of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in the Eastern Africa region, which was concluded in Nairobi, Kenya, last week. The experts said the region has achieved notable rates of economic growth over the last ten years, but warned that dropping prices for international commodities like oil and minerals as well as economic weaknesses in both developed economies such as the US and Europe and emerging economies like China call for seeking answers from within Africa. Andrew Mold, a senior economic affairs officer at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), argued that Eastern Africa needed to maximise the potential from both domestic and regional sources of growth in the face of unstable global economic prospects. "While the prospects for global markets look so subdued, the only sensible strategy is to explore all the possibilities for invigorating intra-regional and intra-African trade and investment. To do otherwise at such a time may condemn the region to a prolonged period of slower growth," he said. UNECA's eastern Africa region covers 14 countries; Burundi, Comoros, DR Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Madagascar. Others are Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The region's ICE meeting is held annually to discuss key issues and challenges about economic and social development...

The revival of East African Community 15 years ago during the NRM rule has placed the region in the metropolis on the global map increased market size of the region, led to high economic growth among benefits that comes with integration. Regional economic integration is one way countries achieve national interests only in concert with others. It expands national markets to the region. Like globalization, it can be thought of as an alternative to international embeddedness or how one or countries relates to the rest of the world. Learning from international experience and reorganizing the importance of regional integration, the establishment of the Permanent Tripartite Commission for East African Co-operation, was signed by President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya and Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania.   Revival of East African community 30 November, 1993 - permanent tripartite commission for East African co-operation established. On March 14, 1996 – the co-operation secretariat was launched in Arusha as the executive arm of the tripartite commission. On November 30, 1999 - the treaty establishing the east African community is signed. On July 7, 2000 –the treaty entry into force of the treaty and coming into being of the new EAC was realized and was launched on January 15, 2001 by the three heads of state. President Museveni has been at the fore front that East African economies should develop through regional integration over the last 15 years the EAC regional integration has proven itself on the international stage and has...

African governments have been working to establish a monetary union for the past several years, and the benefits of such a move cannot be overstated. By 2024, the East African Community will have unprecedented cross-border exchange that will revolutionise member economies and foreign investment prospects. The system will spare investors the headaches and expenses of currency conversion, and that improvement alone will make the region more attractive. However, the East African Community should heed the eurozone’s economic troubles as it works toward implementing its own monetary union. Greece defaulted on US$1.7-billion in debt it owed the International Monetary Fund in 2015, leading it to the brink of exiting the eurozone. It also provided a sobering example of what can go wrong in such an economic bloc. If the East African monetary union is to avoid such crises, its leaders must address the following concerns before 2024: 1. Macroeconomic Convergence Volatile foreign exchange and inflation trends should evoke concern about macroeconomic convergence in East Africa. Stark variances exist among the member states’ currencies, such as the Rwandan franc and the Ugandan and Tanzanian shillings, and there could be troublesome spillover among East African Community economies. However, some regional countries appear to be working together ahead of the monetary union. Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda recently created a single tourist visa that make it easier for international visitors to tour the three countries. This is aimed to bolster tourism and is geared to attract investors who see regional mobility improving. These three countries...

The 2015 Africa Tourism Monitor has uncovered that visa simplification schemes have the potential to further boost tourism revenue and job creation by between 5% and 25%, and thus far supporting visa facilitation initiatives, including e-visa and regional visa cooperation, have already led to immense economic benefits for countries that have adopted this approach. This revelation comes at a time when SADC states are preparing to expand the KAZA (Kavango Zambezi) visa, a common tourist visa developed by Zambia and Zimbabwe, which has been identified as the first step towards a SADC uni-visa. The Tourism Monitor published by the African Development Bank (AfDB), further indicates that the continental tourism sector is growing. The report attributes this growth to various initiatives aimed at boosting the industry which include the simplification of visa systems and regional cooperation mechanisms through the KAZA visa and East African Community (EAC) uni-visa. According to the report the African tourism sector grew by 4% in 2014, making it the second fastest- growing tourist destination (Southeast Asia grew by 6%). In 2014, a total of 65.3 million international tourists visited the continent, which is a significant leap from the 17.4million that visited the continent in 1990. Among the top five African countries for tourist arrivals were two SADC states South Africa in 3rd place and Zimbabwe in 5th place while Botswana topped Lonely Planet’s list of best places to visit in 2016, beating out countries such as The United States of America and Japan for first place. The...