The Secretary General of the East African Community (EAC), Dr Richard Sezibera, has hailed the progress in trade negotiations between the grouping and the European Union, saying that this was the first time regional states were negotiating terms of reciprocal trade arrangement with Europe as a bloc.He was responding to questions from the media after the presentation of the EAC budget estimates for the financial year 2012/2013 to the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA), last week.According to Sezibera, unlike the previous arrangements under the Lome and the Cotonou Agreements, which were unilateral arrangements, whose terms and conditions were decided by the European Union, the EPAs will create some level of predictability and transparency in the trade regime between EU and EAC.EPAs refer to Economic Partnership Agreements which, once concluded, will determine the trading roadmap between the five EAC member states and member states of the European Union.In addition, Sezibera noted that under the Everything But Arms (EBA) preference scheme for Least Developed Countries, countries were assessed periodically to ascertain whether they remained eligible to benefit from the EBA.Moreover, there were stringent Rules of Origin (RoO) under the EBA, which makes it challenging for countries to effectively utilise this market access opportunity. The Secretary General said in light of this, the EPAs have the potential to consolidate the EU market for EAC’s exports. He observed that the EU market was still one of the significant export destinations for the region’s agricultural products since it offers the option to access a high price market that is considerably protected.Understandably, the EPA Rules of Origin are expected to be simple, flexible and asymmetrical to take into account the different levels of development between both parties. It allows for single transformation of textiles and cumulation with all the countries that the EU has concluded or will conclude a Free Trade Agreement.Sezibera reaffirmed the EAC Partner States’ commitment to concluding the EPAs that promote the interests of the region.