The World Bank has said it will provide $1.2 billion to support infrastructure development and improve the competitiveness of the East African Community (EAC) states. It will also through private sector affiliates - International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) - provide additional resources for regional infrastructure through market-driven private sector financing and guarantees. The financing will contribute to the EAC states’ planned investments in the next three to seven years. This support is additional to large ongoing individual country programmes. “We are partnering with the EAC Governments, other development partners and the private sector to invest in regional infrastructure and to help deepen policy integration and reduce barriers to trade in the EAC,” said World Bank Country Director for Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda Philippe Dongier. He was speaking during the EAC Heads of State summit on Infrastructure in Nairobi. Inland waterways The retreat was officially opened by Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto. Participants included Heads of States’ representatives, ministers, chief executives of development banks and regional economic communities, and private sector leaders. Mr Dongier said World Bank is preparing investments to revive the region’s inland waterways on Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika and to enhance the capacity and efficiency of the two main EAC ports on the Indian ocean: Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania and Mombasa in Kenya. “We will also invest in specific transport links to better connect landlocked countries (Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan) to the Northern and Central corridors, this way improving these countries’ access...

Competition on a level playing field is good for the consumer. It should also be good for the producer, because it keeps you on your toes and guards against complacency. However another unfortunate factor that encourages complacency is government protection. A favourite means of this protection, is taxation. Behind this wall, companies can hide their inefficiencies in production and pass over the cost to consumers with higher prices. If different taxes are levied on a different basis or different rates across the EAC, this produces obstacles to the free movement of goods and services. Ultimately, this state of affairs frustrates the fundamental objectives of a Common Market. Harmonization of regional taxes will give the EAC a big lift because businesses will find it much easier to operate across borders when everyone is paying the same rate.. According to the EAC Common Market Protocol, ‘The Partner States undertake to progressively harmonize their tax policies and laws to remove tax distortions in order to facilitate the free movement of goods, services and capital and to promote investment within the Community’. The concept of a Common Market involves the elimination of all obstacles to EAC trade. This is involves a process of eventually merging the national markets into a single market and creating a genuine internal market. The EAC Common External Tariff (CET) regime of 2004 was a major step in having harmony on import duties. However the national taxation policies play a far more sensitive role in leveling the playing field for...

Efforts by the Uganda Export Promotion Board (UEPB), together with Traidlinks, to build the competitiveness of 82 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to penetrate the East African market have started to yield results. In the first eight months of this year, the companies have generated an aggregate of $4.6m, according to Daniel Karibwije, UEPB’s director, Trade Promotion and Public Relations. Since 2009, through an export development initiative dubbed ‘Market Linked’, the SMEs have been connected to buyers from the different East African Community member states with a mission to have Ugandan products penetrate the regional market. “Up to 82 companies have been on sales missions within the EAC member states in addition to taking part in international marketing trainings. Through this programme, over 376 buyers have been identified in western Kenya, Rwanda, northern Tanzania and Burundi,” Karibwije said. “At least 755 business appointments have been set up for Ugandan companies to discuss business with potential buyers. On average, each participating company has had 11 appointments with potential buyers in the market across the eight group sales missions that have been held.” According to Karibwije, about 50 per cent of these companies have now started to export to the other areas of the region while others are making adjustments in order to do the same. In order to coordinate efforts and promote sustainable trade, an alumni club has been established to foster peer-to-peer learning and promote competitiveness. Last Friday, the club had its third market-linked alumni meeting, which was presided over...

VENTURES AFRICA – East Africa, a region recognized as a successful global location for mobile payments and a thriving online space, is embracing technology advancement as part of its growth plan for diverse sectors. The newly recently launched East Africa Single Visa is intended to scale up tourist arrivals in EAC member states; Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. This multinational-travel certificate which costs $90 will grant tourists a 90-day validity period with no room for extension. Although termed as ‘long-haul destination’, one cannot stop wondering why, with massive cultural and natural resources, Africa continues to lag behind in recorded tourist visits. According to a report by the World Travel and Tourism Council, of the one Billion tourists who travelled in 2012, only 50 million were destined for Africa, where East Africa only managed to scoop 5 million (1 percent) of the bound-for-Africa travelers. “We need to re-package ourselves” quipped Waturi Matu-Coordinator for East African Tourism Platform in an interview with Jovago.com, a leading online hotel booking platform in Africa. Ms. Matu explains that this revamping process would start with the leadership, down to stakeholders and the African Media, “Africa has suffered blanket misconceptions for a long time. We are yet to carry ourselves from the gripping grief of the term ‘dark continent’. Africa needs to tell her own story, and let the world know that beyond the crisis (that exist in every other nation) there exists vast stretches of unique culture, wildlife, flora and fauna, business opportunities and untapped resources.” Having...

Logistics in Africa is a menace, and firms that try to launch logistics businesses face a mamoth of hurdles from poor infrastructure to double insurance on both the goods and the machinery and the capex is way too high. East Africa is reported to have the highest freight and transport costs in the world; over 50% higher than the USA and Europe per kilometre. Indeed, transport costs for land locked countries in the region can be as high as 75% of the value of exports. Transit times have the most significant effect on exports and also result in firms having to carry higher levels of stocks making them less efficient. To solve this, a US$ 16 million challenge fund has been opened for innovators who can devise a strategy to crack the code into reducing the cost of transport and logistics in East Africa. The Logistics Innovation for Trade (LIFT) challenge fund will provide grants ranging from US$ 200,000 to US$ 750,000 to winning proposals from innovators from across the world but whose ideas will be implemented in East Africa. LIFT is managed by TradeMark Africa (TMA) Challenge Fund with funding support from UK-DFID; and seeks to trigger and introduce innovative approaches to tackling freight and transport costs in East Africa region. Successful LIFT project applicants will contribute to TMA objective of reducing transport time along the main East Africa transport corridors by 15% by 2016. TMA Senior Director, Business Competitiveness Lisa Karanja said, “Our desire is to see East...

A whooping $16 million (about Rwf11bn) fund has been set aside for innovators who can come up with effective strategies to cut costs on transport and logistics in East Africa. The competition, dubbed Logistics Innovation for Trade (LIFT), will provide grants ranging from $200,000 (about Rwf137m) to $750, 000 (about Rwf514m) to winning proposals from innovators from across the world but whose ideas will be implemented in East Africa. The challenge was launched yesterday in Nairobi, Kenya. Managed by Trade Mark East Africa, the challenge seeks to trigger and introduce innovative approaches to tackling freight and transport costs in East Africa which reportedly has the highest freight and transport costs in the world. Applicants are expected to devise strategies of reducing the time taken along the major East African transport corridors. The two major corridors are; the Northern Corridor, which links EAC countries to Mombasa Port, and the Central Corridor which connects to Dar-es- Salaam. TradeMark Africa’s Senior Director of Business Competitiveness Lisa Karanja said their desire was to see East Africa adopt world class logistical technologies to ably compete with the rest of the world. “It is a challenge to the private sector to develop and test new ideas that could reduce the cost and time of transport and logistics. TradeMark will co-invest with the private sector in projects that have the potential to achieve this but may be too risky to undertake without external support,” Karanja said. The organisation’s Challenge Fund manager, Isaac Njoroge, said the fund will...

As the East African community heads of state meet in Nairobi this week, Rwandans have no reason to wonder about the benefits of the body. Among the many benefits Rwanda has achieved from EAC integration is the Single Tourist Visa use and the Single Customs Territory (SCT),” Permanent Secretary, Ministry of East African Community Affair, Safari Innocent said while addressing the media. The SCT allows Rwandans to cross over to Kenya and Uganda using identity cards which is supporting trade between the countries, and the Single Tourist Visa allows tourists to move within the three countries with payment of 100$ which is supporting the tourism sector not only of the country but also of the region. According to the ministry of East African Affairs: “About 831,236 and more persons have used ID cards to travel to Uganda and Kenya since the use of IDs as travel documents prevailed and this means that movement of Rwandans across the borders was made easy which is boosting trade,” The SCT has reduced days spent during transportation of goods from Mombasa port to Kigali, from 21 days to 5 days which has reduced operation costs. The cost of hiring a truck to transport cargo from Mombasa to Kigali has reduced by about $1000 from $5200 in 2010 to $4200 in 2014. Rwanda has since January 2014- September issued over 1,529 tourist visas which shows a very big achievement for the country under the tourism sector. Since the establishment of the EAC Common Market Protocol...

Rwanda and Tanzania are expected to resolve dispute over park levies in the forthcoming East African Community Regional Forum on elimination of Non-Tariff Barriers slated for next month. Transporters in Rwanda say the levies by the Tanzanian authorities violate the Customs Union and Common Market Protocol. The contested levies include $300 Rwandan trucks are charged for crossing Saadani National Park when they go to load salt at Sea Salt Factory in Saadani and $6 as gate pass fee. Tanzanian transporters on the other hand are required to pay only $40 while entering the park, Bagamoyo, Pangani and Zanzibar triangle. Rwandan transporters complain that the disparity eats into the small margins they earn. The subsidies and protectionism the Tanzanian transporters enjoy have made them dominant in the transportation business in Rwanda. The dominance of Tanzanian transporters is reflected in a recent study by the Ministry of Trade and Industry. The report, released in September this year indicates that Rwanda spends $355 million on foreign transport and logistics services annually but much of this money benefits foreign registered transport firms. “The East African Community Ministry made investigations and discovered that $300 is charged on Rwandan trucks crossing Saadani National Park to load salt at Sea Salt Factory located in Saadani and $6 as gate pass fee,” Valentine Rugwabiza, EAC minister told a meeting of traders at Hotel Mille Collines recently. “We already have evidence and we are going to raise it with the government of Tanzania in the forthcoming 16th regional forum...

Inconsistency in the East African region has resulted in talks around regulation in the trade and service industry. Earlier this week, Valentine Rugwabiza, minister of East African Community, discussed trade and policies in the region. One of the issues was access to customs systems between Rwanda and Kenya. Rwandan agents did not have access to Kenyan customs systems. While Kenyan agents had access to Rwandan customs systems. “The decision has made is that only 86 Rwanda agents have been nominated to clear cargo destined to Kenya and other transit cargo. The Rwanda regulatory authority will send their names to the Kenya Revenue Authority to have their bounds activated,” she said. There was also the consideration of Rwanda opening up a revolving account with shipping line authorities for easier business at sea ports. Rugwabiza also tackled the complaint that Rwandan truck drivers were being charged a road toll of 300 dollars, per truck, when crossing the Tanzania National Park. While Tanzanian trucks were only charged 40 dollars top cross the same road. “At the EAC level, on no tariff measures, we will raise this issue with the aim of having it either brought at 40 dollars as what is imposed to Tanzania and just the same treatment for east African businesses or remove it all together. But what we are aiming for here is just to have a level playing field,” added Rugwabiza. Source: CNBCAFRICA.COM

Kigali: The Ministry of East African Community (MINEAC) started a weeklong campaign and activities to fast track the integration process. According to a statement from the government, the activities focus on key achievements in the seven years since Rwanda joined the EAC, available opportunities, on-going projects and addressing questions and concerns of stakeholders on EAC(East African Community) Integration. The activities will also highlight future strategic priorities as well as awareness campaign on how Rwandans can benefit from the community, all under the theme “EAC Regional Integration: Benefit & Opportunities to update Rwandan citizens on 7 years of Rwanda in EAC”. Speaking to media about the East African Business Summit held in Kigali in October 2014, President Paul Kagame said that Rwanda has greatly benefited from the EAC. “Benefits from EAC Integration have multiplied in the seven years since Rwanda joined the EAC. Rwanda has benefited from EAC’s large market, challenges have been shared and addressed together, benefits have come from many sources and Rwanda has been much better in the last seven years”, he said. The Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of East African Community, Innocent Safari, highlighted numerous benefits Rwanda enjoyed, saying that, “About $100 million has been invested in the country by investors from other partner states in the seven years since Rwanda joined the EAC. The use of Identity Cards for travel has eased free movements of people, goods and services between Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.” Other successful projects that the East African Community embarked on include...