adminTinashe Makichi : Business Reporter
The final review of the draft for the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa Medium-Term Strategic Plan 2016-2020 has been concluded with representatives of member States putting their final input into the plan. The new plan will focus on entrenching trade facilitation, market integration, infrastructure development and industrialisation covering Small and Medium Enterprises.COMESA Secretary General Sindiso Ngwenya yesterday described the Strategic Plan as a useful tool to engage strategic partners in the pursuit of regional integration to marshal both financial and non-financial resources to build on successes and override the prevailing challenges.
Mr Ngwenya said over 80 percent of COMESA programmes are funded by co-operating partners. He said this makes sustainability of programmes under such funding arrangements difficult and therefore implored member States to take ownership of the strategy for it to contribute towards structural transformation of their economies.
“Member States should entrench ownership through funding of regional integration programmes in order to reverse reliance of external funding for regional integration programmes. It is a responsibility of member States to domesticate the strategic plan through alignment with their National Development Plans and take on ownership of the implementation process,” said Mr Ngwenya.
He said speed towards attaining regional integration agenda will come about when Member States and non-state actors fulfil their roles and responsibilities
On market integration, Mr Ngwenya said challenges towards attaining the seamless flow of goods, free movement of persons, capital and other objectives are still daunting.
“Intra-regional trade remains low below 10 percent, transaction costs are still very high and huge obstacles exist to the free movement of goods, capital, investments and people in form of non-tariff and technical barriers to trade,” he said.
Mr Ngwenya lamented that immigration laws and policies in many member countries are still harsh and discriminatory yet free movement of business persons remains a recurrent theme in policy discourse for the desired goal as stated in the strategy for achieving the common market.
With regard to industrialisation, Mr Ngwenya observed that most COMESA member States’ economies still rely on the production and exportation of a few primary products without any value addition.
“The need to transform our economies from an over-reliance on primary commodities and low value added products will continue to drive COMESA’s planning and execution agenda,” said Mr Ngwenya.
“Such pursuits should involve developing the necessary strengths and resilience, as well as the capacity to enhance competitiveness, innovation and growth through industrialisation and trade facilitation,” he said.
After the current review, the 2016-2020 Strategic Plan will be presented to the Council of Ministers meeting in October this year for adoption and thereafter implementation.
The development of the new strategy used a wide consultative approach with key stakeholders internally and externally.
Consultations were undertaken at different levels including African Union Commission under Agenda 2063, Centre for the Sustainable Development Goals as well as with partner Regional Economic Communities.
As a result, alignment has been established at the global, continental, regional and subject specific levels.
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