Posted on August, 9, 2018 at 08:49 am
George Kebaso
The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) region would gain $17.5 billion (Sh1.75 trillion) annually in intra-Comesa exports if all the member States fully implemented the digital trade facilitation reforms that involve the use of paperless trade measures.
According to research findings unveiled at the Fifth Comesa Annual Research Forum, currently underway in Nairobi, five countries have the greatest intra-Comesa export trade potential for the region. These are Eritrea, Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Ethiopia.
Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Commerce principal economist Adam Willie said this was based on their low baseline implementation score of the six digital trade facilitation measures in the study.
“The implementation scores used in the study only captured the paperless trade facilitation measures that enable efficient coordination and exchange of data and documents among government border agencies and business community within a country,” Willie, the main researcher explained.
Top scorers under the assessment criteria were Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius and Rwanda.
With a population of 492 million people and a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) value of $682 billion (Sh6.82 trillion) in 2015, Comesa is one of the largest economic and trading regional community in Africa.
Economic experts rated its growth at an average of five per cent in 2016, while Comesa total exports amounted to $71 billion (Sh7.1 trillion).
Source: MediaMax Network