The speaker of East Africa Legislative Assembly (eala) Rt Hon Dan Kidega last evening held a closed door meeting with Tanzania’s President John Pombe Joseph Magufuli at State House, Dar es salaam.
The meeting aimed at focusing on a number of key challenges facing the East African region, socially, politically and economically. But most importantly, the two principals zeroed in on the political instability in the region.
According to a source who attended the meeting, Magufuli assured the Speaker not to worry about EPA.
The East African countries have for a long time signed a truce under Economic Partnership Agreement between the EU and the Eastern African Community to strengthen their business ties under the East African Community.
Several workshops have been initiated to develop strategies for regional lead paint laws in the East African Community (EAC), an economic community including Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.
A number of stakeholders across the region attend these meetings.
“Due to EAC’s influence as a major trade block in Africa, progress on lead paint laws there will help promote them throughout the continent,” said one of the officials who attended last evening’s meeting.
Before heaping praises on the outgoing Speaker Kidega, Magufuli urged the regional parliament to concentrate on integration work.
The integration was formed in Article 5 (2) of the Treaty establishing the East African Community which states that the first stage of EAC integration will be the formation of a Customs Union, skipping the earlier stages of Preferential Trade Area and Free Trade Area.
The EAC Customs Union Protocol came into force in January 2005 and has four major elements; the establishment of a Common External Tariff (CET), the establishment of EAC Rules of Origin (RoO) criteria, including Certificates of Origin and Simplified Certificates of Origin, the internal elimination of tariffs for goods meeting the EAC RoO criteria and the elimination of Non Tariff Barriers (NTBs).
The primary objective of the Protocol establishing the Customs Union is to facilitate inter and intra regional trade in goods.
The Treaty establishing the East African Community then names as subsequent stages of EAC integration the establishment of a Common Market, then a Monetary Union and ultimately a Political Federation.
Polls
On 27th lawmaker across the region will vote for the new regime (4th assembly) in their respective countries. Each member state is mandated to send 9 representatives to the assembly and electing a Speaker is rotational.
Magufuli asked the new entrant South Sudan to select it’s MPs early enough to join the assembly on time.
For the instability in Burundi, Magufuli assured Kidega that the summit is working on the matter and the problem will soon be sorted.
