A day-long workshop on the progress of the East African Common Market negotiations was held at the Kigali Serena Hotel yesterday, amidst calls for the fast tracking and deepening of regional integration to stave off further marginalisation in the global economy.

Organised by the country’s Regional Integration Committee (RIC) Secretariat, the national stakeholders’ workshop also aimed at drawing recommendations that will assist the high-level task force in the ongoing talks.

"A decision has been taken by Heads of State that negotiations on the Common Market (CM) protocol be concluded by December 2008 and implementation starts in January 2010,” Monique Mukaruliza, Rwanda’s Minister for East African Community (EAC) Affairs, said in her opening remarks.

She further cautioned that member states bore in mind the deadline when nominating the experts who are currently handling matters.

"This workshop is going to focus on the progress of Common Market negotiations and mainly on key issues arising from negotiations and state of play in service liberalisation,” she said, after highlighting the main pillars of the negotiations – free movement of goods, persons, right to residence and establishment, among others.

Mukaruliza stressed that Rwandans and others cannot reap the benefits of globalisation as long as economies in individual countries are still small and vulnerable, a point also reiterated by Amb. Joseph Mutaboba, RIC Chairperson and the President’s new Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region.

Mutaboba, in his welcoming and introductory remarks, read by Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) Commissioner, Mary Baine, said that integration is no longer a question of choice.

"It is a sine qua non for survival of weak entities such as our five sister states in this region. Fast-tracking and deepening integration is the only way forward for the bloc to avoid further marginalisation in the global economy,” Baine read.

After RIC’s Executive Secretary – Prudence Sebahizi – presenting an update on the key issues arising from the negotiations, land policy concerns especially in Tanzania were revealed to be delaying progress, among others.

In article 13 (the right of establishment) of the draft protocol for the common market’s establishment seen by The New Times, both Uganda and Tanzania maintain that the sub-article should be deleted because it is not a Common Market issue.

Further inquiries by Anaclet Kalibata, the Immigration boss and others on the backdrop of the land problem revealed that, among others, provisions on the use of land in the partner states were different.

Minister Mukaruliza stressed that the spirit of integration is to harmonise policies and expressed concern that some states’ policies are being harmonised while others were not.
She, however, said there was an answer.

"We are now amending the treaty,” she said, explaining that presently if one country was not ready on one issue, then all the others could not advance.

"But according to the amendments, if one isn’t ready, others can move on and the other joins later when ready. We are learning from the experience of the European Union,” she added.

The level of awareness on the EAC Common Market negotiations is still low in the Rwandan community.

It was thus recommended that more workshops be organised at national level and that in order to own the process, all institutions should be involved.

Ends