East African Heads of State at a past meeting. The new round of talks is expected to run through the week and build on the milestones reached in Nairobi in July.
Optimism marked the onset of the final round of negotiations aimed at crafting guidelines of a protocol for the planned EAC Common Market.
Negotiators from the five regional member countries are in Kampala to put final touches on the annexes of the protocol that is set to be adopted by the bloc’s leadership in November. The region hopes to have an operational common market in January next year.
“A way forward has been found on most of the outstanding issues and we anticipate to push through to the end as our discussions continue over the next few days,” a source participating in the talks told Business Daily.
This round of talks is expected to run through the week and build on the milestones reached in Nairobi in July where the team dwelt on contentious issues such the right of residence, free movement of goods and services and right of establishment.
“We urge the task force team to finalise the outstanding issues so as to be able to present the EAC Common Market Protocol and its annexes to the multi-sectoral coordination committee for consideration,” EAC deputy secretary-general in-charge of Planning and Infrastructure, Alloys Mutabingwa said in a statement.
Unlike this latest round of talks, the last discussions in Nairobi came during a tiff between Tanzania and other regional partners after it questioned the powers of decisions made by the EAC council of ministers, forcing negotiators back to the drawing board in the search of a breakthrough for a common market.
Tanzania has also slowed the wheels of integration into a common market by maintaining that it would not budge on its earlier position regarding land and residency rights.
In the proposed draft, EAC members want any citizen of the partner state who shall have resided in the territory of another country for a period exceeding five years as resident to be entitled to permanent residence status upon undergoing necessary administration procedures.
But the EAC summit ruled in favour of the council of ministers, saying its decisions were binding and would be representative of the bloc’s top most decision organ.
In a bid to clear past mistrust among members, the East African Community (EAC) summit leadership recently sought special provisions in the common market protocol that would ensure all foreign investments were adequately protected and granted fair treatment.
This, the summit argued, would encourage investors to pitch businesses in any part of the community without fear of acts such as expropriation.
Sources at the EAC common market talks in Nairobi said Uganda expressed reservations on proposed text on the protection of foreign investment.
Kenya, the main force behind the investment protection text, however argued that the text would act in place of previous bilateral investment treaties that guided trade in the region.
The concern by Uganda stemmed from a premise that the proposed texts only sought to sum up the bilateral arrangements that existed in the models of the WTO including arbitration of disputes without providing specific guidelines.
World Bank country director Johannes Zutt said an integrated market system would help fight the effects of the second wave of the global financial crisis that is expected to hit the region.
“To tame such effects the country needs to have more open trade systems in integrated markets arrangements such the East African Community,” he told a forum in Nairobi.
Mr Zutt said that trade under the East African Community Customs Union had greatly boosted regional economic prospects with the cost of cross-border trade falling by about five per cent. “We strongly support ongoing plans to have a regional common market and a monetary union,” he said.
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