Rwanda that joined the EAC bloc in 2007 is up to revive its National Monotoring Committee (NMC) to become an effective body to address various Non Trade Barriers (NTBs).
This was discussed on September 20, by the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Private Sector Federation under the patronage of the Trade Mark East Africa, a multi-donor funded agency set up to promote regional trade and economic integration in East Africa.
The Agency hosted a high level validation workshop of the ‘National Strategy for Eliminating Non-Tariff Barriers’ at Serena Hotel.
The event attracted over 70 participants coming from both the public and private sector, such as Sorwathe, Bralirwa, and Association of Transporters, Ministry of East African Community, Rwandan Revenue Authority, Rwandan Bureau of Standards, Immigration General Secretariat and National Police.
The goal was to reverse the situation by strengthening the Rwanda NMC’s operations,enabling it to become the driving force of the NTB elimination process at national and regional level.
Permanent Secretary in MINICOM, Emmanuel Hategeka in his remarks said: “I am confident that the strategy will provide the inspiration and drive towards the elimination of all NTBs that we are facing as a country.
“The strategy will also enable us engage with neighbouring countries in a meaningful way as we seek to lower the cost of trading across borders”, added Hategeka.
The Strategy is to build around three strategic outcomes, each addressing important capacity issues and processes in the monitoring and elimination of NTBs using different advocacy channels both regionally and nationally.
The press statement from MINICOM shows that due to evidence from various studies conducted in the last two years, it is clear that the cost of Non Tariff Barriers (NTBs) for EAC countries runs into tens of millions of dollars.
It shows that within the bloc landlocked countries such as Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi carry the greatest cost of NTBs due to distance from the main ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam.
The other obstacles include bad road infrastructure, delays at border crossings and lack of harmonized import and export standards and procedures are still an obstacle to trade within the region.
As a result of imports of one container in Rwanda, for example, is more than 3.5 times higher than in Tanzania and 2.5 times higher than in Kenya.
To address the problem of NTBs the EAC Protocol envisaged the establishment of theNational Monitoring Committees on NTBs (NMCs) as a national mechanism for monitoring and coordination of NTB elimination.
However, the functioning of these committees has not been very effective in either the national or regional context and the list of the main NTBs registered in the Time Bound Programme for Elimination of NTBs has not recorded much progress since Rwanda joined the EAC in 2007.
The core part of this strategy therefore, aims to revive the NMC to become an effective body to address various NTBs.
According to the statement, the main reasons for the lack of progress in the National Monitoring Committees on NTBs (NMCs’) work have been lack of authority, coordination structure and resources, lack of analytical capacity to address priority NTBs in a meaningful way.
Also identified are insufficient representation and contribution of the private sector to its operations, insufficient regional cooperation between the NMCs and lack of a strategic planning approach to monitoring and elimination of NTBs.
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