SPEAKER of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) Martin Ngoga has apologized to the regional business community for bad policies that hinder economic growth in the region.
Mr Ngoga was apologetic over the assembly’s failure to rectify the policies which he said weren’t in favour of the regional business environment.
“I’d like to apologize to the business community for allowing such laws and policies to thrive and stood in the way of most of your ventures,” explained the EALA Speaker before a host of regional Chief Executive Officers at a CEO Roundtable Meeting held here yesterday.
Without divulging on the policies, Mr Ngoga observed that a great deal of the guidelines has scared away potential investors in the region, with many opting to shut down their businesses.
In the same vein, the EALA Speaker challenged the CEOs to play their rightful roles in ensuring that the community was moving in the right direction.
Referring to the collapse of the former EAC in 1977, Mr Ngoga challenged the business community to ensure it doesn’t face a similar fate.
“Have you subjected your collective voices for the interest of the community,” he queried.
The EALA Speaker further urged the CEOs to do away with nationalistic sentiments, challenging them to provide leadership to the regional intergovernmental organization of six partner states.
Earlier on, the East African Business Council (EABC) Executive Director, Mr Peter Mathuki commended the regional business fraternity for exhibiting resilience as some countries grapple with Covid-19 Pandemic.
The EABC boss rooted for continuous engagement with partner states as well as strengthening supply chains and responding to customer needs.
The CEOs met in Arusha to deliberate on the fate of the business environment within the EAC.
World Bank’s initial projections indicate that as a result of the pandemic, economic growth in East Africa, as well as other sub-Saharan African countries will decline from 2.4 per cent in 2019 to between - 2.1 and 5.1 per cent this year, depending on the success of measures taken to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.
The pandemic is also projected to cost the EAC Partner States between 37 billion US dollars and 79 billion US dollars in terms of output losses.
At the regional level, 51 per cent of EAC’s exports are destined to countries highly impacted by Covid-19, at the same time 53 per cent of its imports originate from such highly impacted countries.
Substantially reduced movement of international freight, and reduced capacity or in many cases closure of borders by EAC Partner States and their trade partners as a measure to contain the pandemic within a space of less than a month since March 2020 halted virtually all trade.
The trade disruptions and losses represent a major shock to the EAC economies since trade is the driving force behind their economic growth and development as evidenced by the high total trade-to-GDP ratios averaging 27.4 per cent during 2018-2019, according to 2020 statistics by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
