EAC cautions Kenya counties against trade barriers
EAC Integration secretary Barak Ndegwa said more barriers by county governments would negatively affect EAC’s mission to achieve free movement of goods and services.
He acknowledged the challenge of Non-Tariff Barriers in preventing free movement of goods and labour from one country to another, even as the regional bloc works towards abolishment of NTBs in all its member states.
“Our concern is major entry points including Port of Mombasa which serves a number of interlocked countries and if the local county governments attempt to charge any fee we might lose cargo business to the Dar es Salaam port,” said Mr Ndegwa, during an EAC stakeholders meeting at Flamingo Beach Resort in Mombasa.
He said 27 non-tariff barriers had already been resolved while decisions had been reached on how to address 12 of them in the EAC Time Bound Programme on the elimination of NTBs.
“We understand county governments need to get revenue from ports in their regions but we are trying to advice them to how best they can deal with the issue since elimination of non tariff barriers has to be carried out in accordance with Treaty for Establishment of East African Community which outlaws the imposition of NTBs to Intra-EAC trade unless permitted in the Treaty,” said the secretary.
During the function which was attended by representatives Revenue Authorities, Customs Officers, Clearing Agencies; Financial Institutions, Security Agencies, Standard Authorities, and different officials from several line ministries, the attendants agreed to work towards establishment of one ideal custom union centre which will be responsible of collection of taxes and submitting to the relevant countries.
“We hope in the next four days of our deliberation on the best ways to improve service delivery to various clients in our entry points, we shall come up with the best formula of creating single custom territory to collect revenue,” said Mr Ndegwa.
He added: “Once the centre is established, other countries will benefit from the eight days custom warehouse free offer which many are not gaining at the moment because of bureaucracy at the facility.”
Since the enforcement of common market in July 2010, member state countries have recorded increased trade and investment due to significant increase in cross-border investment in services sectors cutting across banking, insurance and tertiary education.