EAC to Fast Track Regional Integration

(Afrique en ligne)--The second round of negotiations of the East African Community (EAC) common market protocol opened in Nairobi on Monday amidst expressions of determination by all the parties to work towards the conclusion of the negotiations and reaching agreement on the protocol by the set deadline of December 2008.

The Nairobi round of negotiations will be held from 18-23 August 2008. The first round of the negotiations were held in Kigali, Rwanda on 14-22 April 2008 and made significant progress with agreements that were reached on the overall structure as well as specific issues on the preamble. It also discussed the objectives and principles of the protocol, free movement of goods, free movement of persons and free movement of labour.

Addressing the opening of the talks in Nairobi, Kenya’s assistant minister for EAC, Peter Munya, commended the high level task force on the negotiations of the EAC common market protocol for reaching consensus on a large number of the critical aspects of the Protocol. The minister said the negotiators should adopt a positive attitude in shedding off some national interests ‘if we are to realize the objective of the common market, which is to create a single internal market that guarantees the free movement of goods, persons, labour, services and capital’. The minister said that Tanzania, which did not attend the first round of negotiations had, however, in the intervening period received the report of the Kigali deliberations and forwarded her comments.

The Tanzania comments will form the first agenda of the current second round of the negotiations in Nairobi, after which they will proceed into the other aspects of the protocol, including the right of establishment; the right of residence; free movement of services; transport; and free movement of capital.

Meanwhile, the EAC deputy secretary general (projects and programmes), Julius Onen has said a key outcome of the Nairobi round of negotiations was for the high level task force to consider Tanzania’s comments on the Kigali deliberations. He said he was confident that a compromise would be reached on the Tanzania comments, which would be constructive and in the spirit of give and take that the negotiations were emphasising.

The Tanzania comments, while broadly endorsing the Kigali deliberations, sought clarifications or further elaborations on several issues, including movements of refugees and structural aspects of addressing imbalances in the implementation of the common market. The Tanzanians are also seeking clarification of the principles of asymmetry and variable geometry as well as establishing logical build up from customs union to common market and addressing more boldly the issues of acceleration of economic growth and development in their link to the promotion of free movement of factors of production.

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