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Business Reporter
The Common Markets for Eastern and Southern Africa Secretariat has so far mobilised about $9 million from member states subscriptions as the regional body starts planning the 2015 budget.
In the 2015 budget the secretariat proposed a consolidated budget of $64,40 million which is a slight increase from the 2014 budget of $64,20 million.
The funds will be raised from contributions by member states and development partners.
Zimbabwe was expected to contribute close to $695 000 towards the consolidated Comesa 2014 budget.
The country struggled to increase the elasticity of its budget and contribute close to a million dollars to the regional bloc, given the liquidity challenges confronting it.
The first meeting of the Comesa policy organs kicked off yesterday in Lusaka with a call to its member states to pay their due contributions to the regular budget of the regional organisation.
“Country delegates attending the Administrative and Budget Committee were informed that by the end of November 2014, the secretariat had mobilised a total of $8,821 million from member states,” said Comesa.
Assistant secretary-general in charge of administration and finance Ambassador Nagla El-Hussainy said the secretariat had undertaken an annual review of the formula of contributions based on the most available statistics.
She told the committee to persuade member states who are in arrears to pay their contributions.
The committee is comprised of accounting officers from Comesa co-ordinating ministries.
The budget, which was presented to the committee, is guided by the 2015 work programme whose main thrust is the consolidation of the intra-Comesa trade through micro, small and medium enterprises development.
This would be achieved through the six pillars which are market integration, cross-border economic infrastructure, industrialisation, institutional and regulatory policies, capacity building and support services and resource mobilisation.
The meeting was also presented with a proposal to introduce a Comesa machine readable travel document in compliance with the International Civil Aviation Organisation Standards deadline of 2015.
The new electronic machine readable travel document will replace the current Comesa laissez-passer that the staff uses when travelling on official business which is, however, not universally accepted in many countries.
Ambassador El-Hussainy said the new document will have enhanced security features in keeping with new technologies and new security techniques in producing and processing travel documents.
The report of the Administrative and Budget Committee will be presented to the Council of Ministers meeting scheduled to take place on December 8.
Online Reporter