The East African Community (EAC) Partnership Fund Steering Committee has approved $7,315,000 to support four key priority areas in the EAC integration agenda this financial year.The Partnership Fund is a basket fund with contributions from development partners to support activities in the EAC.The areas to be boosted are the implementation of Common Market Protocol, finalization and execution of the Monetary Union Protocol, promoting citizen involvement in regional integration and the strengthening of EAC institutions.Jean Claude Nsengiyumva, the EAC Deputy Secretary General in charge of Productive and Social Sectors, said the fund has now been fully integrated in the main planning and budgeting cycle of the bloc."The fund had become a very important budgetary support to the main EAC budget and that it had enabled the EAC to implement several activities in the integration process,” he noted.The meeting to approve the fund was held yesterday in Arusha, Tanzania and attended by the development partners’ representatives from Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, DFID-UK, European Union, World Bank, Norway among others.Nsengiyumva further said that convening of the extraordinary forum was meant to ensure the partners were involved in the planning process before the budget is finalised. The EAC budget for 2012/2013 is set to be completed by the end of April.Speaking to The New Times yesterday, Monique Mukaluriza, the Minister of EAC Affairs, said the development fund was of great importance towards fast-tracking regional integration programmes."The fund has played a key role in enabling the community to speed up the implementation of several activities in the partner countries,” she added.The EAC Secretariat prepares the EAC budget in consultations with the bloc’s organs and institutions, then the Council of Ministers approves the budget before being tabled in the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) for debate and final approval.Gisela Habel, the Chair of the Partnership Fund Steering Committee, observed that there was a general positive reception for the progress being made in the integration agenda and the continued efforts to focus on the result-based outputs.