THE East African Community (EAC) Council of Ministers has urged the trading bloc to fast track the implementation of the Regional Postal Sector Strategy, an official said over the weekend. EAC Director of Infrastructure Philip Wambugu told a regional forum in Nairobi that a baseline survey for the regional postal sector has already been concluded. “A meeting to consider the report of the survey has been scheduled for May 2015,” Wambugu said during the East African Communications Organization Postal Conference on Leveraging Information Communications Technology in the Transformation of the Postal and Courier sector in the region. Wambugu said that the report of the survey is rich in information on the current state of the sector as well as insights on the way forward. He said that the strategy would assist EAC partner states to harmonize their policies, laws and regulations for the sector. In the recent years the region has liberalized the sector, which led to a development of a vibrant private sector. The director said that development of the postal sector cannot take place without the involvement of the private sector. According to the EAC official, electronic commerce presents a great business opportunity for the postal sector. “This is because physical goods bought online have to be delivered physically to the buyer,” Wambugu said. “However, the challenge is for postal operators to develop strategies for exploiting the opportunities that ecommerce provides,” he said. Source: Daily News

ARUSHA, Tanzania - The cost of doing business across the East African Community remain high, in spite of the efforts being made by Partner states and with the support of Development Partners. In addition, 24 non-tariff barriers (NTBs) still remain unresolved, the just-ended 16th ordinary EAC Summit was told in Nairobi. “This denies us the opportunity to unlock the immense potential of regional integration and starves businesses of innumerable opportunities,” President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya said during the 16th Summit of the regional leaders in Nairobi. He was handing over the Chair of the Summit to President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania. “To grow intra-Community trade, we need to implement decisive solutions without delay,” he said. The Kenyan leader said NTBs still complicate businesses in the region. These are also impediments to East Africa’s competitiveness as a global investment destination denying the EAC Bloc unaccountable business and investment opportunities. “NTBs must go. I am glad to note that our Council of Ministers (the policy organ of the Community) has introduced a legal framework aimed at moving this agenda forward,” he said. Kenyatta also acknowledged the high cost of roaming calls across the region, describing it as yet another unnecessary impediment to trade and communication in the bloc. “It is unacceptable that in many instances, calling outside our continent is much cheaper than communicating within our region,” he said. He called for urgent interventions by relevant regulatory authorities on the issue. However he appreciated the One-Area-Network initiated by Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya...

Regional legislators will from next week tour the EAC States to collect stakeholders’ views and submissions on the envisaged East African Community Electronic Transactions Bill 2014. East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) said the visit which involves the Committee on Communication, Trade and Investment starts today, ending on Thursday. The Committee chaired by Uganda’s Mukasa Mbidde, has split into two groups to be more effective. Members will undertake simultaneous tour of the capitals. “The first group shall visit Dar es Salaam, Nairobi and Kampala while the second group will be in Bujumbura, Kigali and Kampala,” Eala said in a press statement. Stakeholders to be visited include ministries responsible for ICT, finance, trade, commerce and tourism. Others are the offices of the Attorney General and the Law Reform Commissions as well as the Law Societies and enforcement agencies. The MPs are also expected to meet representatives of the private sector including the East African Business Council and the respective private sector federations in the partner States. Both groups then converge in Kampala, Uganda on March 4, 2015, to consider the views and synthesise the input into a report. The Bill was introduced as a private member’s Bill at the recent sitting in Arusha by Dr James Ndahiro. “The Bill aims at making provision for the use, security, facilitation and regulation of electronic communications and transactions to encourage the use or e-government service and to provide for related matters,” noted the regional parliament. In May last year, the East African Payments System was...

Germany's Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier is seeking to intensify ties between Germany and Africa. Berlin is particularly interested in countries that foster regional stability. Steinmeier's four-day trip took him to three countries - the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Kenya - and its purpose is to forge new partnerships for Germany. There were occasional glitches. At the Nairobi museum, the minister was shown the start of a film with sound, but no pictures. But such mishaps did not stop the high-level cultural and scientific delegation from Germany engaging in a lively debate with Kenya's cultural elite about new forms of cooperation with Africa. Such cooperation is expected to acquire tangible shape at a newly created Humboldt Forum in Berlin starting in 2019. Cultivating a new relationship with Africa was the main goal of the foreign minister's four-day tour. In spite of the ongoing crises in Ukraine, the Middle East and Greece, Steinmeier went ahead with his Africa tour, the fourth in twelve months, to promote Germany's new Africa policy. "We have to look at Africa in a new way," Steinmeier said. Germany still tends to view Africa as the continent of crises and conflicts. "But this is no longer true for all of Africa, because there are also anchors of stability in which we are particularly interested," the German minister said. 'Where is Germany?' Steinmeier said one anchor of stability in the region was Rwanda, despite deficits in democratic governance and its tense relationship with its neighbor, the...

TANZANIA’S share of trade in the East African Community is expected to be further buoyed by rising exports from its growing manufacturing sector. Exports to East African Community partner states hit record high in 2013 with total trade turnover glossing over 1.5 billion US dollars, according to the East African Community Facts and Figures for 2014. The East African Community second largest economy had a positive balance of trade in the EAC region with a surplus of 723 million US dollars in 2013 up from a deficit amounting to 158.8 million US dollars in 2012. Compared with 2012, Tanzania’s intra-EAC trade grew by 26 per cent in 2013, with exports rising by an impressive 115 per cent, although imports declined by 41 per cent, the figures showed. Kenya remained Tanzania’s main EAC trade partner, with trade flows totalling 1.2 billion US dollars. Information from the Ministry of East African Cooperation shows the main exports to the East African Community region include machines, fertilizers, cement, electrical equipments, ships and boats equipments, cereals, oil products and their distillations, paper and textiles. However, Tanzania’s exports to the EAC constitute a minor share out of the country’s total exports in 2013 which reached about 8.5 billion US dollars, according to Bank of Tanzania reports. Tanzania main exports partners are India, Japan, China, United Arab Emirates, Netherlands and Germany. Tanzania major exports are agricultural commodities with tobacco, coffee, cotton, cashew nuts, tea and cloves being the most important. Other exports include gold and manufactured goods....

Tour guides across the East African region will soon get the same training and manuals to ease their work, APA learns here Tuesday. Speaking in an interview in Kampala, the chairperson of Uganda Safari Guides Association, Herbert Byaruhanga, said that with the formation of the Federation of East Africa Tour Guides Association, the task of harmonizing the standards will be easy. He said the harmonization will ensure that the guides that are trained in Uganda have the same syllabus like their counterparts in other East African Countries. This means that the guides can operate in all the countries, in areas like bird watching and nature guiding. However, he said the guides may need to undergo specific training in each country when it comes to cultural guiding. Currently, the guides do not have a standard uniform training. While Kenya already has a standard and well developed module, Uganda and other countries are still developing their own. He said as the team players, they are already working to ensure that all the East African tour guides have a standard training that makes their work easier. Source: Star Africa

A DELEGATION of Indian business people from the state of Gujarat is in the country seeking trade and investment opportunities. The delegation of over 20 chief executive officers, managing directors, proprietors of companies and Federation of Gujarat Industries (FGI) is in the country mainly to boost bilateral trade between East African Community (EAC) and their country. Among the representatives was Amit Patel, President of FGI, who spoke on the need for EAC countries, including Tanzania, to provide incentives for research and development so that Delhi's Silicon Valley eggheads should come and invest in the bloc. Looking at India's industrial prowess and especially its information communication and technology, transport and pharmaceutical sectors are already leading exporters of their merchandise to Tanzania and the EAC bloc. Providing incentives to such big investments, which are an important factor in developing a modern middle income economy, is highly commendable and as bilateral trade between our two countries grows, knowledge should very much be part of it. As Indian High Commissioner to Tanzania Debnath Shaw said in Dar es Salaam yesterday, the two countries trade volume is set to peak 5bn US dollars within the next five years. Mr Shaw said in the past 48 months, bilateral trade between Dar es Salaam and New Delhi has more than doubled thanks to cordial relations and industrious private sectors of the two countries. Bilateral trade growth which has been in favour of Dar es Salaam for the past 48 months with growth of 72 per cent and...

Although Rwandan exports to fellow East African Community member states increased by 7 per cent to $131.56m last year, from $122.94 million in 2013, the country spent $546.80 million on imports from the region during the same period. The statistics are contained in the Monetary Policy and Financial Stability Statement presented early last week by the central bank Governor, John Rwangombwa. It left experts concerned and called for efforts to double performance. The UN Resident Coordinator Lamin M. Manneh was one of those who expressed concern, noting that something needed to be done to balance the country's trade relations with EAC partners. The trade minister Francois Kanimba, said a number of initiatives were ongoing to boost exports. Currently, Rwanda's main exports are tea, raw hides and skins, coffee, bars and rods of iron or non-alloy steel, leguminous vegetables and beer. Kanimba observed that with regional efforts to remove trade barriers beginning to pay off, it will benefit various initiatives aimed at diversifying export commodities to ensure that Rwanda has a wide array of items to sell to its neigbours. Since July 2007 when Rwanda joined the EAC, it has built a reputation as one of the most committed when it comes to implementing decisions aimed at making the integration aspiration a reality. However, some believe it's taking too long for the country to derive dividends from its commitment to the integration efforts, seven years after diving into the project. But such a concern raises questions of who is not performing...

The East African Community’s council of Ministers has been directed to expedite implementation of the framework for harmonised EAC roaming charges, including the removal of surcharges for international telecommunications traffic originating and terminating within EAC by July 15, this year. EAC Heads of State made the directives in Kenya’s capital Nairobi during the just-conclude 16th ordinary summit. In their communiqué, EAC leaders directed the council of ministers to study the modalities for promotion of motor vehicle assembly in the region and to reduce the importation of used motor vehicles from outside the community and report to the 17th summit. The summit also directed the council of ministers to study the modalities for the promotion of the textile and leather industries in the region and stopping the importation of used clothes, shoes and other leather products from outside the region and report to the 17th summit. Themed: “Deepening and accelerating integration: towards political federation” the summit noted the revised road map for the negotiations on the admission of the republic of South Sudan into the EAC and directed the council to ensure that negotiations are conducted in accordance with the revised roadmap. The summit further noted that the verification exercise for the admission of the Republic of Somalia into the East African Community was not undertaken, as preparations with the government of the republic of Somalia have not yet been finalized. The summit directed the council to undertake the verification exercise and report to the next summit. The summit adopted the...

The slide in Kenya's exports to the East African Community is likely to continue in the near-to-medium term as neighbouring countries industrialise faster, according to the Kenya Association of Manufacturers. Chief executive Betty Maina told the Star on Friday that some of the products that Kenya used to export to Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania are now being produced locally or being sourced from elsewhere at cheaper prices. She cited China and India as among countries that have eaten into Kenya's share of the five-nation EAC market. Hardest hit products include those that are paper-based or sugar-based [such as confectioneries], Maina said. An analysis of official data has shown that Kenya's sales to the neighbouring countries have been dwindling over the last four years, ironical to the noises around EAC integration that have been growing louder and louder over the same period. The value of sales to Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda in 11 months to November last year dropped to Sh85.95 billion, a 21.1 per cent decline from Sh108.93 billion over the same period in 2011. "These countries are industrialising and as they do so, they replace imports, majority of which were coming from Kenya," Maina said. "The other thing is that we have also been replaced in those markets by Indian and Chinese goods." She said there was a growing trend in imports from the two countries into the region including Kenya "partly because of our own rigidities in the Kenyan market, as well as blockages in accessing the East...