David Mugabe
4 November 2009
interview
Kampala — THE East African Customs Union comes into effect January 2010, just two months away. The New Vision's David Mugabe caught up with the East African Community Secretary General, Ambassador Juma Mwapachu, in Arusha, Tanzania on the region's state of preparedness for the union, security and terrorist threats and other challenges facing the EAC. Excerpts below:
Is there a special arrangement for Burundi and Rwanda who just joined the customs union in July this year yet the fully fledged union comes into force on January 2010?
There is no breathing space for Rwanda and Burundi.
As far as the customs union is concerned, it was one of the conditions for them to accede to the East African Community.
The breathing space they had enjoyed was only for two years from July 2007 to July 2009.
One would like to believe that there has been a lot of good work to prepare for the onslaught (of the Customs Union) from them.
The remarkable thing is that they have fully participated in the negotiations of the East African common market protocol.
We have also not heard anything from them that they will not be ready.
Do you think the two countries, Tanzania and Uganda, are ready since the transitional phase for zero tariffs in intra- region trade ends in December?
It is not a question of the two being ready. They have had four years breathing space.
During this time, there has been emergence of business confidence in Tanzania and Uganda which probably did not exist before.
The negotiations on the customs union took about three and half years because of apprehensions about Kenya being superior.
This anxiety has evaporated over the last four years because the two have their own industrial capacity on the one hand.
They have also come to realise that trade with Kenya does not hinge exclusively on manufacturing, that Uganda and Tanzania have got their own advantages particularly in agriculture, on which they can leverage their trading particularly with Kenya.
One of the litmus tests about this confidence is the record time within which the common market negotiations have proceeded, a record time of 18 months.
There is still a big problem with awareness of the inherent opportunities the community presents as the recent study commissioned by the EAC Customs Directorate shows especially among the wanainchi, what are you doing about it?
Generally, the question of outreach has been a challenge.
My reaction to this deficit is, maybe we are pointing too much blame on the EAC Secretariat.
It is not an executing bodyr but a think tank. The key role for outreach is really the partner states. No other regional bloc has the structures that the EAC has. Our members of the East African Legislative Assemblies sit in national parliaments and cabinets.
For Rwanda and Burundi, the ministers do not sit in parliament, but Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania have the platform of national parliaments.
Maybe we have not fully exploited the benefits of this unique system that we have.
This is one of the most important challenges that we must confront because how then do we create a critical mass of people who understand the EAC coming together.
Are we on course for the monetary union and the political federation?
As far as the monetary union is concerned, we made serious advances in taking a study in what is involved.
The five governors of our central banks have been greatly involved and a validation process has been ongoing. The goal of 2012 maybe rather ambitious because the monetary union is a complex level of integration and requires a very intricate level of convergence.
For instance, Burundi is just coming out of war and they do not have structures. They do not even have a revenue authority. Our leaders would not want to see variable geometry where some people are left behind.
They would like to see five countries move together. For the federation, we are developing best practices that we can use as a template which can inform a federation of East Africa.
We have elections in all the five countries starting next year up to 2012, what role will the EAC secretariat play?
Between June to November 2010, the EAC will face a major challenge as far as its operations are concerned.
This is something we are discussing. If we do not harmonise our election periods, we will continue to face gaps. For instance, in Kenya after the violence for about four months, the ministers could not meet.
But will the EAC have a say in the smooth running of these elections?
Ultimately, the EAC will have to move in the direction that the European Union Commission has. That is, to give more power to the secretariat.
This is one of our recommendations in the common market protocol, to move the EAC to a commission. Currently the secretariat cannot take any decisions but a Commission would have a more defined role.
As a secretariat, the EAC is not an executing agency. We use the partner states and the ministers for EAC affairs are our key links with the partner states. We can call them on short notice if there is a matter regarding a partner state.
The recent role of some EAC partner states like Uganda and Burundi in Somalia peacekeeping has ignited terrorist threats. Any concerted plans to tackle this as an EAC problem?
Our chiefs of defence forces will be meeting from November 9-13.
The subject they will be looking at, is the idea hatched at the Kigali heads of state summit which is the need for EAC to have its own standby force.
They are looking at issues to do with terrorism. Our defence forces have also been doing military excises together. So we are building a base and rapport for a single unit of command.
This will be a prelude to what president Kikwete of Tanzania said at the summit, the need for an East Africa Defence Pact, meaning if one partner state is attacked, the others respond.
A cross-cutting issue noted by the World Bank "Doing Business Report-2010" points out corruption and the challenge of accessing credit as the top two obstacles to doing business in East Africa, why are we not having an EAC voice on this issue?
Over the last 18 months, the EAC has been working with the anti-corruption bureaus in East Africa to come up with a protocol that will be considered by the ministers.
This will identify the root causes of corruption. It is not just a question of arresting people and jailing them. The issue should be on uprooting the evil.
We see a lot of distortions on doing business firstly in the mindsets of our public officials.
About 60% of the distorted cost of doing business is in the mindset, corruption, and short operational times of our border posts. The other 40% of the issues have to do with infrastructure like roads, rail and energy and the collapse of our maritime.
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