Nairobi — FOR 18 MONTHS, AZIZA HASSAN Mkuki, a Tanzanian medium-scale cross-border trader, has not been a happy woman.

Mkuki is one of the many traders from the East African region who say they have not seen the benefits of the Customs Union. Her plight is captured in a new documentary, which examines the strengths and weaknesses of the trading bloc.

The film which is financed by George Nangale, the chairman of the East African Legislative Assembly committee on communications, trade and investments, is entitled Emerging East Africa: The reborn EAC and cross-border trade, brings to the fore some of the problems that still hinder free trade among the East African citizens. It also highlights the gains made so far under the Union. Every week, Mkuki travels from Arusha to Namanga on the Kenya-Tanzania border, some 175 kilometres away, to buy merchandise from the Kenyan side.

However, most of the time she has been forced to use panya routes (the word given to routes used by smugglers on the porous borders) to ferry her goods so as to avoid paying Customs duty.

For example she says, she bought goods worth Ksh6,600 ($92) at Namanga and paid Ksh5,400 ($75) duty before she was allowed to cross the border with the merchandise. She normally hires push carts from the Kenyan side to ferry her merchandise to Tanzanian through the bush. But sometimes she is unlucky and is arrested and the goods detained by the Customs officials.

To have the goods released she has to bribe the officials. But the bribe, she says, is not as much as the duty charged when she goes through the normal channel. Although Mkuki has done business between the two towns for many years - during which she has experienced all manner of barriers such as high taxes, red tape and corruption - she hoped things would change for the better with the coming into force of the East African Customs Union in January 2005.

Under the Customs Union, which is the first stage of integration of the three East African countries the partner states agreed to enhance free trade among themselves by administering a common external tariff on goods coming into the region. Goods from a member state - save for a particular category of goods from Kenya - are supposed to be imported duty-free.

A fully fledged Customs Union, under which all goods originating from any of the partner states will be charged zero tariffs, is expected to be realised in 2010.

But unlike Mkuki, Augustine Mallya, a Tanzanian onions dealer, says in the film that the trading environment among the East African countries has improved since the Customs Union was introduced.

He, however, qualifies the improvement. "Some things have improved while others have remained the same," he says, noting that the tax he pays on goods he imports from Kenya has gone down by 22.5 per cent since the Customs Union was implemented.

Also featured in the film is Vimal Shah, the chief executive officer of Bidco Oil Refineries Ltd, a major player in the edible oil and soap sectors in East Africa.

Although Shah says the Union is a good idea, he notes that its benefits are yet to be felt by the business community in the region. "The intentions are noble and the vision is excellent. Things are moving in the right direction. But the biggest problem is that the Customs Union has not yet trickled down to the traders, especially those at the lower level.

"The biggest hindrance to realising these benefits is that people, including Customs officials, are still thinking internally. We really have not started operating as East Africa," says Shah, whose firm's headquarters is based in Thika, Kenya.

He says since the Customs Union came into force, bureaucracy at border posts such as Malaba on the Kenya-Uganda border, has increased, especially for Kenyan goods entering Uganda and Tanzania.

Kenyan Customs officials at the Namanga border, who also feature in the film, contend that it is too early to pass judgment on the success of the Union. "It is true we sometimes receive complaints from traders but we deal with the problems as soon as they are brought to our attention. But we must also remember that the Customs Union is in a transition; it is supposed to be fully operational five years after its launch," he explains.

Edwin Mtei, the first secretary-general of the first East African Community, says the new effort by the East African countries to integrate will succeed because of the way the EAC has been structured.

"It appears that those who formulated the structure for the new EAC factored in the many lessons learnt from the collapse of the first Community. For instance, that the presidents saw it wise to devolve some of the powers to the Council of Ministers in the new set-up is a commendable move. This ensures decisions are not always made at the top," Mtei, who was also one of the architects of the first EAC, says.