THE Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) will construct a new secretariat at a cost of US$47 million on Great East Road in Lusaka.
The new state-of-the-art COMESA secretariat will be built on a four-hectare piece of land about two kilometres from the Kenneth Kaunda International Airport round-about and works are expected to start as soon as funds are available.
Speaking during the site visit yesterday, COMESA secretary- general Sindiso Ngwenya said surveyors have already started works on the land.
Mr Ngwenya said COMESA is growing and it is important for the regional body to move to a bigger location because the secretariat in the central business district is becoming small.
“We will have a state-of-art secretariat, which will be near the airport and will be a magnet for other investment,” he said.
And COMESA Council of Ministers chairperson Ahmed Shide thanked Government for allocating a huge piece of land to the secretariat.
Mr Shide also thanked Government for hosting the COMESA secretariat.
“This project will ignite more investment opportunities as it will be bigger and will house other structures which will create other benefits,” he said.
Mr Shide, who is Ethiopia’s Minister of Finance and Economic Development, said the new secretariat will also strengthen the operations of COMESA.
Minister of Commerce, Trade and Industry Margaret Mwanakatwe said Government is excited by the new site for COMESA.
Mrs Mwanakatwe said Government hopes to see more developmental activities at the site.
“We are grateful that our country has been given an opportunity to be the headquarters of COMESA,” she said.
Mrs Mwanakatwe said Zambia has accrued many benefits for hosting the COMESA secretariat and is hopeful that it will continue doing so in future.
That is what we call job creation, not those 500,000 PF dream jobs.
What Job creation are you talking about don’t you know that they are sweet talking the government into signing the Regional Customs Transit Guarantee (RCTG). Which will kill the Customs Clearing Industry in Zambia. Customs Agents in Zambia will be required to not handle transits passing through the Country and will be needed to setup shop in all Port of Entry such as Durban, Walvis Bay, Dar es Salaam. While you are busy posting comments Agents in Zambia are protesting against this but no one is paying attention. Uganda and Rwanda signed up to this and there Agents are suffering in Mombasa, Kenya Port all businesses are being handled by Kenyan Agents before them. COMESA is a sham organization if you ask me as it even promised our government that they will compensate for any loss this…
Sindiso Ngwenya refered to Customs Agents in zambia as Tuntemba Businesses. Now will they compasate the many Zambian Agents for loss of business I don’t think so this $46 million goes into a building only and most materials wont be sourced locally from architectures designer, surveyors to main contractors only labourers. Margret Mwanakatwe should follow suit as Felix Mutati and Bob Sichinga did in not signing this. Zambians stop being docile and wake up. This economy will not fix itself and our politicians cant understand they dynamics of everything when it comes to economics. We cant even account for the copper that is produced by the mines for export, how I ask will this government calculate the loss of business in Transit revenue loss for COMESA to compensate its a lie
can the govt start thinking of putting dual carriage way to the airport. development towards the airport is increasing. new mall. new hotel. meanwood settlement . we need forward thinking here