Yaounde — To better gauge the level of intra-regional trade in Central Africa, there is great need to harmonise CEMAC-ECCAS data collection and processing methods.

The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) made this recommendation during a seminar on the economic conditions of the first half of 2014 and on short-term forecasts in CEMAC member states, Burundi, the Comoros and Sao Tome and Principe, which ends in Douala, Cameroon this Friday. The meeting was convened by the Economic and Statistics Observatory of Sub-Saharan Africa (Afristat) and the CEMAC Commission.

According to ECA, as regards macroeconomic convergence, CEMAC will be better off if those responsible for the multilateral surveillance in this area always made public the results of the exercise.

This would spur more states to strive meet the criteria on nominal convergence.

The Commission also noted that there should be an indicator of real and measurable convergence for monitoring the transposition and application of Community legislation.

As far as the question of Free Trade Areas is concerned, these texts relate, inter alia, to rules of origin, the procedure for approval of preferential trade documents, certificates of movement and certificates of origin.

About Afristat

It should be noted AFRISTAT is an international organisation established by a treaty signed on 21 September 1993 in Abidjan by 14 African countries, all members of the Franc Zone: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Chad and Togo.

The Observatory's mission is to contribute to the development of economic, social and environmental statistics in the Member States and to capacitate their human resource bases in these areas.