Using mobile phones to report EAC trade barriers is a good move

Intra-regional trade is one of the areas that the East African Community (EAC) member states agreed to promote jointly, especially by devising means that seek to eliminate trade barriers. These include both tariff and non-tariff barriers that affect traders and cargo transporters along the Northern and Central corridors. Previously, trade barriers including weighbridges, robbery of consignments, corruption and many uncalled for stopovers, especially at roadblocks, plagued businesspeople. In addition consignments also had to undergo a series of declarations at each border post. Imports from a neighbouring country, for instance, goods from Kenya to Rwanda had to be declared at the Kenya/Uganda border and again at the border with Rwanda and Uganda before they were allowed to proceed to Kigali. This meant that the truck had to spend 21 days from the Port of Mombasa to Kigali city and considerably 18 days from Mombasa to Kampala in Uganda, yet these are sister countries that are supposed to help each other in business and domestic investment promotion. With the introduction of the single customs territory on the Northern Corridor a year ago, the cost of doing business has since go down. The move has also ease business flow in the region as traders now only required to make one declaration at the first point of entry instead of the four declarations during the old system. To further eradicate barriers to doing business and promote trade, EAC countries have designed means to combat the problems of corruption, theft of goods on transit or in stores and unnecessary roadblocks. Officials from the different governments work with trucker drives and importers to ensure a smooth working environment. A way of finding joint remedies, stakeholders can now report any cases of corruption and other unnecessary hindrances to trade using mobile phones. Also, each country has created National Monitoring Committees (NMCs) to accelerate the process and the trailblasing scheme developed by the Tanzanian business community to allow affected truck drivers, importers and other operators to report non-tariff barriers (NTBs) hampering freight flow by SMSs and sending email online. Rwandan importers and truck drivers should also adopt the same as this would help reduce any challenges they face along the journey. The SMS mode is also used by border trade to report vices among customs officials as well as NTBs. With the implementation the single customs territory along the Central Corridor, truck drivers using the Dar es Salaam-Kigali route face less bureaucracy. Eradicating NTBs to eventually create a seamless single market and spur trade and prosperity is the ultimate goal of EAC government. Traders should help in this efforts by consistently reporting any vices or NTBS using your mobile phones. The writer is the head of media and customer relations at the Rwanda Revenue Authority