By ADAM IHUCHA
Arusha. In an apparent political will to spur intra-regional
trade, Tanzania and Kenya have assented to the East African Community (EAC)
Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade Bill, 2015.
Tabling
the EAC Budget, the Tanzania’s deputy minister for Foreign Affairs, East
Africa, and Regional and international Co-operation, Dr Susan Kolimba, said Dar
and Nairobi had assented to the Bill and that the duo was waiting for other
three heads of state to also append their signatures to it.
These are
Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi and Paul Kagame of
Rwanda. Salvar Kiir of South Sudan will not assent to it, as his country is not
yet fully integrated into the bloc.
The means
both Dar and Nairobi have formally committed themselves to implement the
will-be binding legislation to eliminate NTBs to trade among the five EAC
partner states.
However,
the East African Business Council (EABC) says though it would like the other
EAC heads of states to assent to the Bill, the will-be Act should be returned
to the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) for it to amend and make it
more effective.
The apex
body of business associations of the private sector and corporates from the
five East African countries said the Bill was strictly dependent on the political
will to eliminate reported NTBs among parties involved, with neither
consequences for non-elimination nor retribution for aggrieved parties.
The EABC
trade economist, Mr Adrian Njau, proposes that the Eala should amend the NTBs
Bill to address the fault immediately after it is assented into law.
Mr Njau
argues that the Bill should have provided for Alternative Dispute Resolution
(ADR) mechanism, Arbitration by the Trade Remedies Committee and Petition at
the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) as part of the procedure to eliminate
the NTBs to trade.
The
proposed Bill insists on using the existing mechanisms to resolve disputes on
non-tariff barriers in the region despite the instruments’ failure to resolve
the same for several years now.
These
include mutual agreements among concerned partner states; implementation of the
EAC Time Bound Programme (TBP) for the elimination of identified NTBs; and
regulations, directives, decisions or recommendations of the EAC Council of
Ministers as provided for under Article 9 on elimination of NTBs.
“It’s on
this backdrop that the private sector recommends the inclusion of the ADR
mechanism, arbitration by the trade remedies committee and petition at the EACJ
as part of the procedure for eliminating the NTBs to trade,” he explains.
However,
the 2015 Extension of the Jurisdiction of the EACJ to cover issues related to
trade and commerce provides for another opportunity for arbitration of NTBs in
the region.
“Much as
the protocol, which intends to give the EACJ the mandate to support trade and
commercial matters, is still waiting for the EAC heads of state to assent to
it, excluding NTBs petitions to the regional court prematurely undermines the
efforts,” the EABC chief executive officer, Ms Lilian Awinja, explains.
Eala had
in March last year passed the Bill to promote interregional trade by curtailing
proliferations of identified NTBs stipulated in the TBP.
Going by
a latest progress report on the TPB by the National Monitoring Committees
(NMCs) on the barriers, 19 NTBs were unresolved, new eight of them have emerged
and 98 others have been resolved since the inception of the programme in 2009.
NTBs are
partly to blame for the limited intraregional trade, which was estimated to
stand at 22 per cent in 2014, the committees say.
They NMCs
were updating the 20th EAC Regional Forum on NTBs held between March 30 and
April 1, 2016.
The
immediate former EAC Secretary General, Dr Richard Sezibera, is on record as
saying, however, that the partner states exchanged with each other in the last
three years, growing their trade volumes by nearly 22 per cent, up from merely
13 per cent during the early years of the integration process.
But the
growth is still comparatively low and ranks among the smallest levels of
intraregional trade globally. The volume of trade among the European Union
countries, for instance, stands at 70 per cent.
Experts
point an accusing finger at NTBs for limiting market access and changing the
quantities of goods traded or increasing their prices.
NTBs come
in various forms such as restrictive sanitary and environmental protection
measures, import or export restrictions, price controls, arbitrary application
of rules of origin and other measures.
But with
the NTBs to trade law in place, traders will have an opportunity for reporting
the barriers and seeing the EAC Secretariat adequately address them through
formal channels. Currently, members of the business community have to report
NTBs to their respective NMCs, which, in turn, report them to the committees’ regional
forums held quarterly and sometimes after longer intervals.
The
regional forums incorporate the reported NTBs in the TBP Matrix, a tool
developed in 2007 to track down the barriers ready for eliminating them.
0 comments:
Post a Comment