AS the East Africa Community (EAC) marks 20 year since its revival, the private sector has organised a high level business summit, which aims at elevating intra-regional import to 70 percent from the current 13.9 percent.
The Chairman of the National focal point- The Tanzania private sector foundation (TPSF) Mr Godfrey Simbeye said on Wednesday that the Summit will be jointly organised by the East African Business council (EABC).
“The meeting is scheduled to take place in Arusha from November 28 to 29 this year. We expect 200 business persons from Rwanda and over 500 from Tanzania, other countries are yet to confirm the number of participants,” he noted.
He added: “Despite increased investment promotion at national and regional levels in the year 2017, intra regional import stood at 2.8 billion US dollars which is 13.9 percent only. In the year 2018, Foreign Direct Investment fell by 5.1 percent to 6.7 bn US dollars from 7.1 bn US dollar in the year 2017” .
Mr Simbeye revealed that for the past twenty years, Intraregional trade was mainly dominated by Agricultural commodities, Pharmaceuticals, soaps and plastics and that the intraregional exports grew to 3.2bn US dollars, which is equivalent to 5.6 percent in the year 2018.
He said the summit will discuss best ways of resolving challenges that face business operations in the bloc.
“We want to harmonise not only tax issues but also ways of having competitive industries within EAC. Our aim is to make sure countries do not produce products of the same type to give room for industrial growth,” he said.
For his part the EABC national liaison officer, Mr Raphael Maganga mentioned other issues that will be discussed as one stop centers at borders, common standard checks within the block and of course, advising the governments on the best ways of eliminating non tariff trade barriers (NTBs).
He said that Rwanda president Paul Kagame and his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni had already confirmed to attend the business summit
