EDITORIAL: FAST-TRACKING REGIONAL TRADE IS MOST WELCOME
As the secretariat of the six-nation East African Community (EAC) puts it, “regional trade integration is a cornerstone of the EAC Partner States’ trade policies”. Among other initiatives, regional trade integration and bolstering involves the strengthening of public institutions and private sector organisations which deal in one way or another with exports promotion.
It is with this in mind that the regional integration bloc of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan expressed determination to go along with the Trade Facilitation Agreement of the World Trade Organisation in efforts to fast-track regional trade.
To that noble end, obstacles-cum-barriers to functional cross-border trade within the EAC must first be justly identified and just as justly eliminated, counselled the East African Business Council, the apex body of private sector associations and corporates in the region.
EABC said this at a rotating training workshop in Burundi jointly organised by the Geneva-based International Trade Council, EABC and the Burundi government to familiarise East African businesses with WTO’s Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) and the European Union-EAC Market Access Programme (MARKUP).
The programme is designed to create ready access of EAC goods to the EU market of 448 million consumers.
Similar workshops have already been held in Kenya (Nairobi and Mombasa) and Tanzania (Dar es Salaam and Moshi), and more of them will be held in Rwanda and Zanzibar.
Among other objectives, WTO’s TFA is a binding multilateral trade agreement among WTO member-nations intended to “make cross-border trade easier, faster and cheaper.”
This is very good news indeed – not only for Tanzanian trade with the other five EAC countries (183 million consumers in all), but also for trade with the European Union (with a total of 448 million consumers) and the World Trade Organisation’s 164 member countries across the wider world in general.
WANTED: POLITICAL TOLERANCE
Since early this week, the legacy of Tanzania’s fifth president, the late John Pombe Magufuli, has taken centre stage in Parliament. Debating the 2021/22 budget estimates of the Prime Minister’s Office, some MPs openly faulted a number of major projects undertaken by Magufuli’s government, while others fiercely defended them and the departed leader’s development record.
Interestingly, almost all those involved in the war of words are lawmakers from the ruling CCM. This could be a sign that MPs with dissenting views within the party have finally found their voice in the august House. That a CCM legislator could stand up in the debating chamber and criticise projects being implemented by the government was unthinkable only a few weeks ago. It would have been political suicide.
The most important thing here is to appreciate the fact that there is no way all 60 million-odd Tanzanians can think alike, and that is what genuine democracy is all about.
MPs January Makamba and Kilumbe Ng’enda were right when they called for tolerance and the need to accommodate and respect diverse viewpoints.
