The Common for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) says tremendous progress has been made towards the launch of the regional Customs Union.
The committee on Trade and Customs which met in Zimbabwe recently said the regional bloc agreed on the need for member countries to put in place practical and comprehensive programmes that would speed up the implementation process by the set deadline of 2012.
According to the e-COMESA Newsletter made available to ZANIS in Lusaka Sunday, there is progress in key areas and several recommendations have so far been made to ensure that the process is quickened.
The committee has since appealed to member countries that have not joined the Free Trade Area (FTA) to join as soon as possible since COMESA was now a Custom Union.
The meeting also highlighted a few milestones in the area of Non Tariff Barriers (NTBs) further urging focal points in member states to ascertain the report on NTBs and help in eliminating existing NTBs.
With regards to the Customs Union, the committee welcomed the improvement and recommended that member countries needed more time to examine the thresholds for sensitive products.
The meeting also advised the members to quickly submit their list of sensitive products in order for the committee to finalise the study that would be sent to member states before an intergovernmental committee meeting is held in August this year.
On the relationship between the regional integration agenda and multilateral trading system, the committee recommended that there was need to develop analytical work and develop a regional strategy on World Trade Organisation (WTO) issues.
It said this is in order to articulate coherent regional positions therefore reviving the COMESA working group on WTO. The committee further endorsed the initiative of focused training in institutions in member states on regional integration subjects. The meeting was attended by representatives from the 19 COMESA member states and representatives from WTO.
And Malawi offered to host the next meeting of the Committee meeting on Trade and Customs. Zambia is a member of the regional bloc and the country houses its headquarters.
ZANIS
This is good for the region however, will only benefit hugely those countries with competitive industries.
Zambia’s manufacturing industry is very uncompetitive therefore risk being pushed aside or failure.
we need to rekindle our competitiveness so that we could benefit from such policies.