ARUSHA, Tanzania, Sept 6 – Members of the business community in East Africa will on Tuesday, meet in Kigali, Rwanda for an Annual General Meeting to choose a new Executive Committee.
Members at the AGM, which is held in rotation among five partner states of the East African Community, will choose a new Chairman and members of the Executive Committee.
The EABC Executive Committee is headed by a Chairperson, elected from five EAC partner States on annual rotational basis.
Announcing the AGM, Mr Reginald Mengi, who will handover the chairmanship at the meeting said: “I am happy to report that over the last 15 months, EABC has continued to aggressively pursue its vision of becoming an effective change agent for fostering an enabling business environment for a diversified, competitive, export-led, integrated and sustainable economy.”
In his report to the AGM, Mr Mengi outlines achievements of EABC during his tenure among which is the reduction of Non-Tariff Barriers in the form of weighbridges, security roadblocks along the Northern and Central Corridors, decrease in congestion at ports and delays at border posts.
“One of the key contributors to the high cost of doing business and a deterrent to new investment in the region is the poor business environment that businesses have to contend with,” Mr Mengi said. “We have aggressively tackled, among others, the issue of Non Tariff Barriers (NTBs) by soliciting capacity building for NTB Monitoring Committees in the 5 EAC Partner States and implementation of the NTB Monitoring Mechanism that we helped the EAC develop.”
The NTB Monitoring Mechanism and the NTB Monitoring Committees are key to facilitating the process of identifying, reporting and monitoring the elimination of current and future NTBs within the EAC Partner States.
Mr Mengi said: “As the integration process moves forward and EAC moves closer to a fully fledged Customs Union and the establishment of the Common Market in 2010, EABC has a greater to play in ensuring that the interests of the private sector are well articulated in all policies affecting us and that the climate for doing business is conducive for attractive return on investments.”
