The East African Business Council (EABC) for a Consultant to conduct Impact Assessment of the East African Harmonized Standards Attached please find further details on how to apply and the application deadline. Only applications sent within the deadline will be considered.
“Impact
Assessment of the East African Harmonized Standards on the Business Community”,
July 2016
Key aspects of the Consultancy
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Objective
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To
undertake an impact assessment of the EAC harmonized standards on seven (7)
amongst the most 20 most traded product in the EAC region products on the
overall business environment. The products are; alcoholic beverages, steel
products, surface active agents, edible fats and oils, paper and paper board,
tea and coffee
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Time frame
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Draft
report to be handed over by 22nd August 2016
Submission
of final report by 30th August 2016
The
total contract days will be 21 for the whole assignment
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Location
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Field
work, data collection and information retrieval in the following EAC countries:
Burundi,
Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda
Presentation
of the inception report in Arusha
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Human resources required
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One consultant
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I.
The Client
EABC
The East African Business Council
(EABC) is the apex body of business associations of the Private Sector and
Corporates from the five member countries of the East African Community (EAC).
It was established in 1997 to foster the interests of the Private Sector in the
integration process of the East African Community.
Currently, EABC has 54 associations
and over one hundred corporate members. Amongst the associations are all the
national private sector apex bodies in every EAC country, manufacturers’ associations,
Chambers of Commerce, employer associations, bankers associations etc.
Having its secretariat in Arusha, EABC is through its National Focal Points
(NFPs) – being at the same time the national private sector apex bodies –
represented in every of the EAC countries.
EABC’s overarching objective is to
be the dynamic voice of the private sector in the East African Community in
fostering sustained economic growth and prosperity. EABC further seeks to be an
effective change agent for fostering an enabling business environment and to
promote private sector’s regional and global competitiveness in trade and
investment. In this regard, EABC provides a regional platform through which the
business community can present their concerns at the EAC policy level, with the
overall aim of creating a more conducive business environment through targeted
policy reforms. Additionally, EABC also work towards promoting private sector’s
regional and global competitiveness in trade and investment through provision
of services such as business summits and market information.
Among EABC’s key stakeholders are
primarily the EAC Secretariat, the business community as represented through
associations, associate and corporate members, national policy makers, EAC
organs and institutions and other key national and regional organizations
working towards enhancing private sector participation in the EAC and global
integration. EABC has an “Observer Status” at the EAC, which enables EABC to
attend and participate in all relevant EAC activities and deliberations, not
only at the Secretariat but also in other organs and institutions.
This study will be funded under
auspices of an ongoing partnership project between EABC’s East African
Standards Platform and Trademark East Africa
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II. The
East Africa Standards Platform
The East African Standards Platform (EASP) was
operationalised in Mid-February 2012 as a structure within the East African
Business Council (EABC) in response to the challenges and the trade barriers
faced by suppliers in intra-regional trade due to differences in technical
regulation and standards amongst EAC Partner States.
The
implementation of the activities of this platform is supported by Trademark
East Africa in a project titled “Support to Regional Platforms through EABC”.
The EASP is
aimed at advocating for full implementation of EAC Customs Union Protocol on the
free movement of goods in the region. In this regard, the Platform has
championed the development, harmonization and revision of the East African
Standards according to the most traded goods in the region so as to facilitate
intra EAC trade. Members of the private sector have been involved in the
Technical Committees developing, harmonizing or revising these standards
however there is need for more engagement of the public and private sector to
ensure successful implementation of East African Standards in the Partner
States. In pursuit of the above, the
Platform through the EABC received two years support from Trade Mark East
Africa (TMEA) with an objective of strengthening Private Sector participation
in the development and implementation of East African Standards as well as the
development of a regional technical regulations framework. The time frame for
implementation of the project is two years, starting from November 2014 to
October 2016.
a) The
background to the study
Out of the 20 most traded products,
seven products have standards which have been approved and declared as East
African Standards by the EAC Council of Ministers. Several of these standards
have been adopted and implemented by the Partner States while others have not.
However, no study has been undertaken to
assess the impact of the already harmonized standards on the overall business
environment in the EAC.
This study is therefore meant to
assess the impact of the several standards that have been harmonized on the
business community in terms of costs and time to trade goods in the EAC and the
overall business environment so that the Standards Platform is able to advocate
for further harmonization of standards in the EAC by having clear, realistic
and robust information on standards harmonization and development in the region.
b) Private
sector concerns with regard to standards development in
the EAC
Limited
harmonization, adoption and recognition of East African Standards
The harmonisation of East African
standards faces three main challenges. Firstly, only few standards are
harmonised regionally. Secondly, adoption rates by the NSBs of regional standards
agreed upon is low. Thirdly, even if regional standards are adopted by NSBs
frequently product certification marks are not recognised at the border posts.
Limited
harmonisation of East African Standards
For several of the most traded
goods standards are still insufficiently harmonised. This has tremendously
contributed to the delays at the border points because the National Standards
Bureaus of the importing countries wish to retest the goods before allowing
entry regardless of the fact that the goods have a certification mark from the
bureau of the exporting country. According to the Standards Platform study
(2012) on prioritization of East African Standards and Technical Regulation the
value of the most traded goods was estimated at USD 3.5 billion, implying huge
losses from administrative burdens and forgone gains from impeded trade.
Following the prioritisation of standards by the Standards Management Committee
on behalf of the EASC, 80 Technical Committees were designated, but only 18
have been operationalised so far.
Poor
adoption of the harmonization of East African Standards by NSBs
According to the SQMT Act Section
15 the Partner States shall within 6 months of declaration of an East African
Standard adopt without any deviation from the approved text of the standard the
East African Standard as a national standard and withdraw any existing national
standard with similar scope and purpose. A second study commissioned by the
Platform in 2013 on Adoption of East African Standards and the effectiveness of
the certification schemes in the EAC has revealed however that even in cases
where a regional standard has been agreed upon, there is a very sluggish
adoption of harmonised standards by the National Standards Bureaux in the
Partner States and therefore national standards remain in use instead. In other
cases standards are adopted by NSBs, but the private sector is unaware of this
adoption and thus fails to comply with the newly adopted regional standards.
Lack
of mutual recognition of product certification marks
According to the study on the
adoption of the East African Standards and effectiveness of the certification
schemes in EAC, Partner States were complying with section 24 of the SQMT Act
by notifying the Council of the product certification marks within their
jurisdiction including the design of the mark. However, in cases where harmonised
standards are adopted, some Partner States were still not recognizing as equal
to their own some product certification marks awarded by national quality
system institutions of other Partner States. This is mainly a result of a lack
of confidence in the procedures and institutional capacity of the NSBs, partly
because some quality marks are not issued in compliance with EAC certification
regulations and procedures.
Standards
related Non-tariff Barriers (NTBs)
As a result of the above, goods are
frequently subject to costly and time-consuming re-testing processes because of
either non-recognition of quality marks, non-adoption of regional standards or
lack of harmonisation of standards. In some cases, goods end up being even
completely denied access to other Partner State markets if standards between
the Partner States differ.
III. Description
of the assignment
a) Rationale
for this assignment
In order for the Regional Private
Sector Standards Platform and EABC to keep track of the ongoing harmonization
process of standards and ensure that the already harmonized standards are
impacting positively on the business community in terms of costs related to
standards NTBs and to be able to advocate for faster harmonization of standards
in the EAC, it’s very critical that this study be undertaken for EABC to have
clear, realistic and robust information on standards development and harmonization
in the region.
b) Objectives
and scope of this study
- Establish
the cost and time implications of harmonized EAC standards on the seven
products from the list of 20 of the most traded goods in the EAC region.
- Assess whether intra-EAC trade on the seven
products has increased as a result of harmonized standards.
- Assess
the impact of the already harmonized EAC standards on the seven products
from the list of the 20 of the most traded goods in the EAC region.
- Analyze
the challenges to the full implementation of harmonized standards on the
20 most traded goods in the EAC and provide recommendations on how the
standards harmonization process can be fast tracked
- Establish
the reasons behind the low adoption of East African standards by Partner
States. (Only Uganda and Rwanda have fully adopted the EAC standards).
Propose recommendations and an action plan that the Standards Platforms
and EABC can use to lobby and advocate the other partner states to adopt
the EAC Standards;
- Assess
the reasons behind why other regulatory agencies don’t fully recognize
the quality marks from other National Bureaus of Standards as a tool to facilitate
intra-EAC trade. Propose recommendations that will help in advocating for
recognition of quality marks from regulatory authorities at the national
level
In order to cope with this assignment, the consultant
is required to:
1) Develop
independently comprehensive methodology incl. questionnaire(s) to capture all required
information and use it to conduct interviews with:
No.
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Stakeholders
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Description
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Number of interviews
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1.
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Manufacturers
Associations
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In
all the 5 EAC Partner States
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5
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2.
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Manufacturers
in the EAC
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Of
all the 7 identified products to be surveyed
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4
Per product in all the EAC Partner States
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3.
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CEOs
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Of
the EAC National Standards Bureaus
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5
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4.
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The
East African Standards Committee members
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Members
that make up this committee at EAC
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All
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5.
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The
Standards Management Committee of the EAC
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Members
of this EAC Committee
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All
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6.
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Technical
Committee Secretaries
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In
all the 5 Partner States for the 7 identified products
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All
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7.
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Ministries
responsible for standards in the EAC
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In
all the 5 partner States
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5
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8.
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Private
sector Apex bodies
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In
all the EAC Partner States
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5
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9.
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The
EAC Secretariat
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Officials
at EAC Responsible for Standards
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2
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10.
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Bureaus
of Statistics
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In
all the 5 Partner States
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5
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Interviewing
these and other key stakeholders shall facilitate the documentation of required
information;
c) Products/outputs
to be provided by the consultant
The findings
of the study should be able to provide:
- Analysis
of harmonized EAC standards on the seven products in terms of costs and
time reduction in the movement of goods across the region.
- Impact
assessment of harmonized EAC standards on the seven products.
- Analysis
of challenges of standards harmonization in the EAC with clear recommendations
that will inform EABC advocacy on standards
- Reasons
for low adoption rates of East African standards by EAC Partner States and
identify ways of increasing the adoption rate.
- Assessment
of the low recognition of quality marks by regulatory agencies’
- The
trade trends on seven products with harmonized standards before and after
harmonization
- Develop
a position paper from the findings of the study report
- Final
study report
d) Required
human resources
In order to carry out the
assignment appropriately as well as in accordance with the objectives and
expected outputs, the human resources required are as follows:
1. One consultant responsible for;
o
Developing
the required questionnaire(s) for information collection plus all the templates
for registering all information retrieved on standards in the EAC
o
Presenting
the inception report to EABC for final guidance before the study can proceed;
o
Submitting
of the draft report to the EABC secretariat;
o
Taking
the remarks, given by the EABC secretariat upon reading the draft report, into
consideration and integrating them in the finalreport;
o
Submitting
the final report to the EABC secretariat.
IV.
Time frame, submission dates and modes of payment
The duration
of the assignment shall be as follows;
1.
Submission of proposals- by 20th of July 2016
2.
Evaluation of proposals- one week after submission of proposals
3.
Commissioning of the study- 28th July
The
following reports have to be provided by the Lead Consultant:
1. The lead consultants and the
assistants will be expected to produce an inception report within 7 days of
commencement of the assignment ie 8th August;
2. A draft report within 21 days after
submission of the inception report ie 6th of September 2016;
3. A final report including all
remarks made by the EABC secretariat after having read the draft report to be
submitted in 3 bound copies and in soft copy to the EABC secretariat no later
than September 15th, 2016.The payment of this assignment shall be
made against invoice issued by the consultant and according to the following
scheme:
Time
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Amount to be paid
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Upon
submission of the inception report
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20%
of the total amount
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Upon
submission of the draft report
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35%
of the total amount
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Upon
approval of the final report
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The
remainder of the total amount
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V.
Required qualification and expertise of the consultant
The consultant
shall possess the following qualifications:
·
Masters
degree in Trade Policy, Economics, Law, or any other economics background;
·
Professional
experience in standards development and
cross border trade;
·
Minimum
10 years’ experience in regional trade and partly in regional integration
matters with specific knowledge on the process of standards development
and harmonization within the EAC;
·
Proven
track record on similar assignments;
VI. Expression
of interest
Interested
Consultants or consultancy firms should confirm immediate availability to
undertake the assignment and email their bid(s) clearly marked “EABC Study on Impact assessment of the East
African harmonized standards” in separate files namely technical proposals
and financial proposals, to email address: procurement@eabc-online.com
In case of submission of hard
copies of documents for the bids, the documents should be in one sealed main
envelope titled “EABC Study on Impact assessment
of the East African Harmonized standards “but in separate envelopes comprising
of technical and financial proposals, to be sent to the address below;
The Executive Director, East African Business Council,
Olorien House,
Perfect Printer Street, Off Njiro Road, Kijenge P.O. Box 2617, Arusha,
Tanzania.
The sealed envelope or proposal
should be submitted or emailed to EABC by July
20th July, 2016, 10:00 a.m.
Late submissions will not be opened or accepted.
EABC reserves the right to accept
or reject any application and is not bound to give reasons for its
decision. Further information call tel.
no. +255 27 2543047/2543313 or email procurement@eabc-online.com
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