Regional integration: has it come to this...?

It is consternating that payment of July salaries this year for workers of the East African Community (EAC) was delayed.

But, it’s even more consternating that the delay in paying the salaries as due was because the EAC member-states hadn’t remitted their budgetary contributions to the Community Headquarters in full and on time.

This puts the EAC – and the envisaged regional integration, culminating in an East African Federation – between a rock and a hard place. The EAC had proposed a $111.45 million budget (about Sh255 billion) for the 2019/20 financial year which commenced on July 1, 2019. The theme of the budget is ‘Transforming (East Africans) Lives through Industrialisation and Jobs Creation for Shared Prosperity.’ However, realization of that otherwise noble goal is endangered by the poor contribution habit of the six EAC member-nations: namely Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda – listed here strictly in alphabetical order, and on no other merit.

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As reported in The Citizen yesterday, some member-states are yet to complete remitting in full their contributions to the EAC for the last financial year (FY-2018/19). These are (with the payments-in-arrears shown in brackets): South Sudan ($19 million); Burundi ($3.9 million) and the largest EAC Economy, Kenya ($160,000).

The situation is just as disconcerting this financial year (FY-2019/20), whereby only three countries have forked out their contributions – albeit parts thereof. These are Uganda (which has remitted about $6 million: 70 per cent of its assessed contribution); Rwanda ($1.2 million), and Tanzania ($1 million).

An extraordinary EAC ministerial meeting in Arusha last week gave a grace period to the defaulters to pay all their contributions in full by November 15th this year – on pain of (unspecified) penalty/penalties. It’s debatable whether or not this ‘shape-up-or-ship-out’ approach is the correct way forward

We urge the EAC Heads-of-State-and-Government to urgently dialogue on this and functionally resolve this potential threat to regional integration.

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