CAIRO: The eighth meeting of the biggest African economic blocs’ tripartite summit has launched Sunday in Sharm el-Sheikh, to establish a free trade zone between the 26 member states, Youm7 reported. The African blocs are Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the East African Community (EAC.) The meeting will witness the signing of the African Trade Zone (AFTZ) agreement between Africa’s top three economic blocks, which will be merged into a new 26-nation free trade zone. An official meeting between trade ministers of the 26 African states is to be held Monday and the meetings will end by the presidential summit on June 10, according to Egyptian Commercial Service chairman, Ali al-Leithy. Presidents of the countries are to arrive in Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday, preparing to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s meeting with them Wednesday, Youm7 reported. “Hosting an event that big assures that Egypt regains its leading role in the African continent,” Leithy said. Moreover, a press conference will be held on Monday, in the presence of Egypt’s Minister of Trade, Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour and the ministers of the 26 countries, to announce the results reached during the close discussions. This agreement will facilitate reaching 625 million consumers from South Africa to Egypt, and create a free trade union comprising more than 60 percent of the continent’s economic activity, according to Kenyan business newspaper Business Daily Africa. Source: The Cairo Post

Cape Town (AFP) - The launch of a free trade agreement by three African economic blocs in Egypt this week will be an important step towards a potentially game-changing common market spanning the continent, supporters say. The deal between the East African Community, Southern African Development Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa will create a market of 26 countries with a population of 625 million and gross domestic product of more than $1 trillion. The Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) will be inaugurated at a summit of heads of state and government on Wednesday in Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt after four years of negotiations to establish a framework for tariff preferences and other commitments. "The launch of the TFTA is a significant milestone for the African continent," the South African government said. "We believe that this sends a powerful message that Africa is committed to its economic integration agenda and in creating a conducive environment for trade and investment." The move was welcomed by business leaders at the World Economic Summit for Africa in Cape Town last week, with participants highlighting the fact that just 12 percent of African countries' total trade is with each other -- compared to some 55 percent in Asia and 70 percent in Europe. "The tripartite trade agreement is really important as a first step for Africa... which then can engage with the European Union and others on a global basis," Michael Rake, BT Group chairman and a co-chair of the forum, said....

NAIROBI, June 5 (Xinhua) -- Trade associations and senior officials from East Africa are considering introducing an international trade system to enable freer transportation of goods between neighboring countries, officials said on Friday. Commonwealth Secretariat said the officials from the region are due to meet in Tanzania next week to address national and regional issues relating to implementing the Transports Internationaux Routiers (TIR) system in East Africa. "This meeting will provide a crucial platform to work towards embedding a standardized system in local and regional infrastructure," Commonwealth Secretariat's Deputy Secretary- General Deodat Maharaj said in a statement sent to Xinhua in Nairobi. Maharaj said the Secretariat will continue to support trade facilitating measures in Sub-Saharan Africa, helping countries establish mutually beneficial systems that will create enhanced economic opportunities for the people of the region. The June 8-9 meeting serves as an important initiative to facilitate trade and thus boost economic growth in East Africa. The TIR system, which was established by the UN Economic Commission for Europe in 1975, was designed to allow unhindered transport of goods between countries, mainly by road. The initiative replaces time consuming border checks with the TIR carnet – a universal permit that complies with international standards and provides customs officials with necessary guarantees. Maharaj noted that formalizing trade facilitating measures would boost economic growth in the region, but greater collaboration would be necessary to achieve this. He said 70 countries across the world have signed up to the TIR convention while more than 40,000...

Traders from the East African Community (EAC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and South African Development Community (SADC) may soon trade freely across borders if their heads of states sign a tripartite agreement next week. Speaking on the sidelines of the Trade Mark East Africa stakeholder forum at Serena Conference Centre, trade minister Amelia Kyambadde said all contentious issues have been ironed out and that heads of state of the three regional blocs will, on June 10, sign the Free Trade Area agreement. “The contentious issues included dispute settlement and rules of origin, which is partially done,” he said. If signed, it will pave way for the creation of a larger market to boost intra-regional trade and reduce the cost of doing business. The signing had been postponed twice. It had been planned for December last year but was pushed to mid-February 2015, as SADC reportedly requested for a postponement to allow for further internal consultations. It was again deferred from February to June. Some trade analysts are sceptical whether Uganda will reap meaningful benefits from a larger market yet it has failed to fully exploit the EAC market. “The agreement will open us to bigger economies like South Africa; the question is can we handle yet we still have challenges with Kenya under the EAC and Egypt under COMESA,” a source who asked not to be named for fear of being labelled a saboteur, said. The source added that Uganda will become a supermarket for...

New laws are creating greater liquidity and capital in some African markets and giving African private equity investors more opportunities — especially in pension funds — says Carolyn Campbell, managing director at Emerging Capital Partners, according to a report in InternationalFinancialLawReview. Emerging Capital Partners is a pan-African private equity firm focused on investing across Africa. Changing regulations governing the investment of African pension funds have momentous potential for private equity in certain countries including Kenya, Nigeria, Namibia and South Africa, Campbell said. All four countries recently made changes to asset allocation rules for state pension funds, allowing for investment of up to 15 percent in some cases of pension assets into private companies. “As a result, we are seeing African investors increasingly investing in African private equity,” Campbell told the LawReview. As pension fund regulators and administrators become more familiar with the benefits of private equity, this will present an opportunity to increase the level of capital available to the private sector, Campbell told the LawReview. “This local support should also build the confidence of international investors to invest further in African private equity.” Outside South Africa, most African pension cash continues to shun private equity opportunities on the continent, FinancialTimes reported in October. Insiders say African pension funds have missed out. It’s not because the continent is failing to save for its future – sub-Saharan pension funds total more than $350 billion US — but because of a nightmare combination of regulatory hurdles, poor incentives and hesitant trustees, FT...

West Africa will miss all the potential and opportunities inherent in it by virtue of its location and capacity, if it does nothing to push its integration agenda beyond the free movement of goods, people and capital. Even though regional blocs such as the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East Africa Community (EAC) and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) were motivated by efforts of West Africans, those sub-regional bodies had since moved into new frontiers where they were really reaping the benefits. “These are people who should be learning from the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS), but they are so far ahead of us,” a Nigerian travel business consultant and travel promoter, Mr Iketsi Uko admits and said it was time for the private sector in West Africa to lead the way, having demonstrated that it could collaborate to achieve quicker results. ECOWAS’ latent potential The West Africa region has a population of 300 million, the same as the United States of America and bigger than the European Union (EU). The sub-region has 40 airports dotted across but the region has not been able to harness the benefits of integration. “The region is, therefore, well positioned to be one of the biggest economies in the world and immediately compete with China, which is already taking the world by storm, if we are able to work together,” Mr Uko, also a media consultant, journalist and author, said. The sad thing, however, is that although...

South Africa and the other BRICS nations need jobs, growth and greater competitiveness. Europe needs jobs, growth and greater competitiveness. The US needs much the same. Better trading terms are a key way to secure these goals for businesses and consumers. They can act too through a multiplier effect in a complex set of value chains and SME supply systems. The World Trade Organization (WTO) plays a key role in the adjudication of multilateral trade agreements and their implementation and enforcement, but has been left playing a less dynamic role in recent years – with the failure so far of the Doha Round – in the negotiation of major multilateral deals. It secured the Bali trade facilitation deal recently with helpful customs progress, but even that was a somewhat tortuous process. Bilateral, plurilateral and issue-specific deals are therefore filling the negotiations void left by the WTO. These are aimed at driving progress and helping to prevent any nascent protectionism. The EU and US have both concluded deals with Korea. And the EU with Canada and with Singapore and, on goods for example, with the East Africa Community (EAC). The EU has embarked on a major bilateral programme including with the US (TTIP – a potentially landmark agreement, is going beyond tariffs into the depth of regulatory coherence and convergence), Japan, some ASEAN and Latin American nations, and potentially India. It has also started an investment agreement dialogue with China, and is now looking to overhaul its free trade deal with...

This month, African countries will finalise a 26-nation free trade bloc aimed at opening up business on the continent by 2017, a senior South African minister told Reuters on Wednesday. Trade barriers across the continent has curtailed its growth prospects by driving up the cost of doing business. Lifting charges like export and import fees could promote new markets and boost profits. "We want to remove many of the barriers that stifle economic growth in Africa," Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum Africa in Cape Town. The agreement between finance ministers from the Common Market for East and Southern Africa, the Southern African Development Community and the East African Community will be finalised in Cairo next Wednesday, he said, adding South Africa was "optimistic" it would be in place by 2017. The government said last month official negotiations would be launched in June to eventually establish a continental free trade area embracing the entire continent of 54 countries, opening up a market of 1.3 billion people with a combined GDP of more than $2 trillion. Source: Times Live

The Government has proposed a law governing public-private partnerships as a step toward courting investments in key development projects. Tabled before Parliament by the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) in April, the Bill provides for the legal framework concerning establishment, implementation, and management of public-private partnerships (PPPs). Among the proposed principles is that PPP projects will be procured on a competitive basis. Transparency, fairness, non-discrimination, efficiency, effectiveness, protection of public property and public interest, and accountability, will be the other values governing the procurement process for PPPs. Under Article 4 of the draft law, the application of PPPs must be closely aligned to government’s development goals and strategies, with contractors opting to apply for the management of government contracts or investing in infrastructure projects on the basis of Lease-Operate-Develop (LOD), Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT), Build-Operate-Own, as well as any other PPP arrangement that may be prescribed by guidelines or policies supplementing the law on PPPs. RDB chief executive Francis Gatare said Rwanda needs a special law to regulate PPPs because the ordinary law on public procurement is not enough. “Increasingly, large investment projects require the partnership between government and the private sector. Ordinary government expenditure is governed by public procurement law. The public procurement law, however, was not suited to handle public-private partnership procurement. As such, a legal framework was needed to ensure that the government receives value for money with each PPP project,” Gatare said in an e-mail to The New Times on Monday. Simplying PPP execution Gatare explained that the PPP...

ENTEBBE, UGANDA - East African community countries have been urged to come up with policies that support small farmers to participate effectively in the Agriculture sector where they contribute about 60%. Uganda’s Minister in charge of East African Community Affairs Shem Bageine in his speech read by the Commissioner of production and Social services in the Ministry of East African Affairs Ronah Sserwada during the East African Community Agriculture Budget Summit held at Entebbe said that it’s the responsibilities of the Governments in the community to guarantee the thrives of Agriculture sector in the Five member states of EAC. “Member states should create a conducive, policy, Legal and program frame work that supports the growth and expansion of Agriculture sector where the major stake holders are small farmers who need much support from their Governments” the minister said. The Minister noted that the Agriculture sector contributes much in the regional Economies but because of the lack of pro - small farmer’s policies the sectors contribution in the regional Gross Domestic products is declining For stance the Minister said that the Contribution of Agriculture sector in the Economy of Burundi has decline by 34%, Kenya 29% Rwanda 32% Tanzania 25% and Uganda at 23%. Bagaine in his speech told participants majority being small farmers from all over the Five member states that East African Community has established Regional Integration protocols Where member states committed themselves to co-operate to attain Food security and rational agriculture production through the community by promoting complementarity...