KAMPALA - The East African Community (EAC) yesterday began a sensitization drive aimed at implementing the EAC Competition Act in the five member States.

The Act, which also establishes a regional competition authority, was accented to by the EAC Heads of State in 2006.

According to Peter Kiguta, the Bloc’s Director of Customs, the benefits of the Act include ensuring that the business community in the region gets equal treatment.

"Competition may not have dangers but challenges, the issue here is to ensure that there is a level playing ground, so that all economic players face the same conditions,” he told reporters yesterday in Kampala.

He decried the level of economic unfairness, saying that the differences in cost management are caused by the region’s dilapidated infrastructure.

"We are trying to address some of those issues like the poor road network, and we are doing mobilization of resources for road, energy interconnectivity …so that if one partner state is having a surplus, it can flow into another,” he said.

Currently, big companies in the region tend to out-compete smaller ones through fixing lower prices of similar goods manufactured.

"This in turn makes it hard for the small ones to operate, but with the Competition Act, the small companies will be able to report such cases to the regional competition authority,” Jean Guy Africa, a Senior Trade Officer at the EAC said in a separate interview.

The sensitization campaign continues tomorrow in Bujumbura, Burundi and the EAC team will be in Kigali on Friday.

Ends