The COMESA region
would annually gain $17.5 billion in intra-COMESA exports if all the
member States fully implemented the digital trade facilitation reforms
that involves the use of paperless trade facilitation measures.
According to research findings presented to the 5th COMESA Annual
Research Forum in Nairobi, five countries have the greatest intra-COMESA
export trade potential for the region. These are Eritrea, Egypt, Sudan,
Libya and Ethiopia.
The researcher, Mr Adam Willie, Principal Economist, Ministry of
Commerce, Industry and Enterprise Development of Zimbabwe, said this was
based on their low baseline implementation score of the six digital
trade facilitation measures in the study.
“The implementation scores used in the study only captured the
paperless trade facilitation measures that enable efficient coordination
and exchange of data and documents among government border agencies and business community within a country,” Mr Adam explained.
Top scorers under the assessment criteria were Kenya, Madagascar,
Mauritius and Rwanda. According to the researcher the top scorers have
exhausted their potential to generate additional intra-COMESA exports
with respect to scaling up implementation of the six e-trade
facilitation measures considered in this study.
Comoros, D R Congo, Djibouti, Malawi, Swaziland, Seychelles, Uganda,
Zambia and Zimbabwe had medium implementation scores thus presenting
significant potential to increase intra-COMESA trade by implementing the
DFTA.
The study sought to investigate intra-COMESA exports gains resulting
from full implementation of e-trade by Member States. In particular, the
study sought to assess the impact of the current implementation level
of e-trade facilitation on intra-COMESA exports and secondly, to
estimate the regional gain in intra-COMESA exports when all Member
States fully implement digital trade facilitation.
Arising from these findings, the study recommended policy change by
countries with low to medium baseline implementation scores to scale up
implementation of e-trade facilitation to realize the demonstrated
potential benefits for the region.
“Efforts should be made to understand country specific circumstance
on why they have not been able to scale up implementation,” Mr Adam
cautioned noting that ‘one size fit all policies’ may not work as there
is greater variability in baseline implementation levels.
The five days Forum is reviewing the best
11 out 88 research papers submitted by researchers from COMESA members
States. The policy implications from the papers will be presented to the
COMESA policy organs for consideration as a basis for the policy making
for Member States.
Over sixty regional experts drawn from the academia, policy think
tanks, government and private sector institutions and international
organizations are participating in the Forum.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Disclaimer: Comment expressed do not reflect the opinion of African Parliamentary News