Member states of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) must expedite the removal of all barriers hindering trade of agricultural produce within the region.

Thierry Mutombo Kalonji, COMESA’s director of investment promotion and private sector development, said this yesterday during the closing ceremony of a three day sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) strategy workshop in Kigali.

Developed under the World Trade Organisation (WTO), SPS deals with regulatory measures applied to protect human (food safety and zoonotic diseases), animal and plant health.

Kalonji said the removal of barriers will help boost productivity in the agriculture sector and contribute to sustained economic development in the region.

He added that removing barriers, especially technical regulations, will facilitate ease movement of food across the region, and as well as intra-trade, which is still low, at only 30 per cent.

The experts from at least 19 countries urged governments to increase investments in the sector but, most importantly, work toward harmonisation of trade regulations hindering agro productivity.

"It is critical that countries share information on the type of trade barriers they face while trying to export agricultural products to other member states to be able to come up with a comprehensive plan that will help us deal with the situation,” Kalonji told The New Times.

Innocent Musabyimana, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, challenged states to work toward improving SPS capacities to ensure food safety, while making sure that animal and plant health are not jeopardised.

This, Musabyimana said, will help protect the natural resource base on which agricultural production and trade depends and, thus contributes to food security.

He urged members to take full advantage of the recently launched COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite Free Trade Area, and the establishment of a single market to bolster intra-regional trade.

"This will help increase investment flows, enhance competitiveness and encourage regional infrastructure development as well as pioneer the integration of the African continent,” Musabyimana said.

COMESA is currently reviewing a new strategy for plant and animal health trade facilitation for the next five years.

Compliance with regulations

And, according to Martha Byanyima, the COMESA SPS expert, the new strategy will enable the member states to be compliant with the international plant and animal health regulations.

This could benefit Rwanda’s agriculture sector which registered a marginal decline in growth and contribution to the national GDP share during the first quarter of 2015.

The sector’s contribution declined from 33 per cent end of 2014 to only 31 per cent during the first quarter of 2015.

And its growth equally slowed down from 5 per cent last year to only 4 per cent during the first quarter of 2015, statistics from the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda recently indicated.

However, according to sector players, there is hope that productivity could increase once member states remove barriers to trade for farmers’ produce.

Florence Umurungi, the president of the National Dairy Platform and managing director of Royal Dairies, said removing technical barriers will boost Rwanda’s export industry.

"It is critical that we work together and have these barriers removed because this will help boost the export industry, and, most importantly, drive economic growth,” Umurungi said.

Such trade barriers include unharmonised standards and export requirements in terms of documentation.

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