For the region’s business sector, the most important achievement of the September 6-9 trip to Kinshasa, capital of the newest member of the East African Community, was a deeper understanding of how the bloc and regional private sector work, and cross border investment opportunities existing on both sides, an official told Doing Business.
For four days, EAC Secretary General, Peter Mathuki, led a delegation of EAC organs and institutions and prominent regional business leaders, to the Congolese capital. In Kinshasa, the regional private sector led by the East African Business Council (EABC) held meetings with Congolese entrepreneurs to explore and develop trade and investment relations.
John Bosco Kalisa, Executive Director of the EABC, said: "The most important achievement was a deeper understanding of how EAC and EABC work, and the cross border investment opportunities that exist on both sides.
"Also important was an appreciation of the stages of integration and how the private sector has been deeply involved. Issues of infrastructure, which enables and facilitates trade, as well as access to development finance, were adequately discussed.”
Kalisa reiterated that DR Congo presents enormous opportunities for doing business and investment in various sectors such as mining, agriculture, light manufacturing and services oriented sectors.
"The EABC engagement is to look at how to engage our counterparts through the Fédération des Entreprises du Congo (FEC) in order to address some of the binding constraints such as NTBs, unharmonised legal and regulatory frameworks, as well as enhance business to business linkages.”
As noted, DR Congo has the highest rate of import and export transactional costs, mainly manifested in terms of non-tariff barriers (NTBs).
Private sector discussions in Kinshasa, among others, focused on cross border investment and the sharing of vital trade and investment opportunities.
The trip to Kinshasa follows another trip, in May, by regional business executives who traveled to eastern DR Congo to engage their Congolese counterparts with a view to exploit business and investment opportunities in the vast country.
DR Congo President Félix Tshisekedi, on April 8, signed the Treaty of accession by his country to the EAC.
Insecurity
Despite the fact that insecurity, especially in the country’s east, continues to cause innumerable problems, the DR Congo is expected to bolster the bloc’s economic potential through various ways including opening the corridor from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean and expanding the economic potential of the region.
The security situation in eastern DR Congo continues to be of great concern, Amb Macharia Kamau, the special envoy of the Kenyan President to the Nairobi Peace Process, pointed out.
During the Kinshasa meetings, the Congolese government finally endorsed an agreement allowing an EAC military force to deploy in his country’s east to battle negative armed forces.
Amb. Kamau said the threat posed by armed groups "requires closer cooperation and collaboration with our regional and international partners to counter and eradicate.”
He noted that concerted support to the EAC-led Nairobi process will accelerate actions aimed at reaching the set goals of both the political and military tracks of the process and at the earliest opportunity.