Comesa 2016-2020 draft plan ready for adoption

The final review of the 2016-2020 draft strategic plan for the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) has been concluded with a call to member countries to own up and begin to fund their programmes in order to reverse reliance of external funding for regional integration programmes.

The new plan will focus on entrenching trade facilitation, market integration, infrastructure development and industrialisation covering small and medium enterprises.

But Comesa says the speed towards attaining regional integration will only come about when member states start to fulfill their roles and responsibilities.

In a statement signed by its Head of Communications and Corporate Affairs, Mwangi Gakunga, Comesa said member states have given their final contributions to the plan.

The plan is expected to be reviewed and presented to the council of ministers in October for adoption and thereafter implementation.

The Secretary General of Comesa, Sindiso Ngwenya, has described the strategic plan as a useful tool to engage strategic partners in the pursuit of regional integration.

Ngwenya said 80 percent of Comesa programmes are funded by cooperating partners, thereby, making sustainability of the programmes difficult.

“Member states should entrench ownership through funding of regional integration programmes in order to reverse reliance of external funding for regional integration programmes,” the statement quoted Ngwenya as saying.

He said it is a responsibility of member states to domesticate the strategic plan through alignment with their National Development Plans and take on ownership of the implementation process.

On market integration, he said the challenges towards attaining the seamless flow of goods, free movement of persons, capital and other objectives are still daunting.

“Intra-regional trade remains low – below 10 percent, transaction costs are still very high and huge obstacles exist to the free movement of goods, capital, investments and people in form of non-tariff and technical barriers to trade,” he said.

With regard to industrialisation, Ngwenya observed that most Comesa member states’ economies still rely on the production and exportation of a few primary products without any value addition.

“The need to transform our economies from an overreliance on primary commodities and low value added products will continue to drive Comesa planning and execution agenda,” he said.

Such pursuits, he observed, should involve developing the necessary strengths and resilience, as well as the capacity to enhance competitiveness, innovation and growth through industrialisation and trade facilitation.

Comesa says in developing the strategic plan, it engaged in consultations at different levels including African Union Commission under Agenda 2063, Centre for the Sustainable Development Goals as well as with partner Regional Economic communities.