We can produce competitive products - EABC chairperson

As you take on the mantle, what key areas are you focusing on to ease doing business in the region?
One of the issues I want to look at is harmonising domestic taxes and free movement of persons. We want to see Ugandan workers, Tanzanian workers or Burundian workers seeking temporary employment crossing the borders to any of the member states freely.
But this has not been happening and it is inhibiting the principles of the Common Market which seeks for free movement of services, free movement of persons and free movement of capital. But we also want to see the EAC partner states harmonise the laws to control illicit trade in the region.
The laws are taking long yet we want them to be done very fast to improve trade in the region. Illicit trade has continued to affect industrial growth in the region going by substandard and counterfeit goods and products clogging our market.

What is stalling these processes?
The East African Community (EAC) is an independent organ and we have no capacity to push them to do things according to the speed of the private sector. Private sector is profit oriented and we want to see things done yesterday, not or tomorrow. We are now involving Heads of State in the challenges we are facing in doing business so that decisions are made quickly.

How are you going to boost intra-regional trade as a Council?
I am glad to mention that intra-regional trade is booming among the member states. For example exports from Uganda to other member states have gone up. Likewise, Uganda no longer imports as much as it used to outside the region.
Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania continue to dominate intra-East African Community trade even though its value fell from $5.8 billion (Shs20.8 trillion) in 2013 to $5.63 billion (Shs20.1 trillion) in 2014.
Intra-EAC trade is mainly dominated by agricultural commodities such as coffee, tea, tobacco, cotton, rice, maize, and wheat flour and manufactured goods such as, cement, petroleum products, textiles, sugar, beer and salt.
But there are still challenges with trade in terms of making a choice on what product a consumer wants, the private sector has little or no authority to decide for them. However as a Council, we have strategies that are on-going to promote the local consumers to buy their own through ‘Buy East Africa, Build East Africa’ (BEABEA).
There is challenge of illicit trade and most of it originates from outside the region. We have seen counterfeits undermining the growth and potential of our local industries.

How is the Council prepared to address the never-ending non-tariff barriers to increase Intra-regional trade?
It’s the implementers of the laws to work with us.The removal of NTBs is an on-going process because once you remove one, another comes. This is one of our core roles as EABC to identify the NTBs and bring them to the authorities for action. But to as a Council, we need sufficient capacity to address these challenges we are experiencing.

You mention that EABC is going to promote BEABEA, yet at the member country level they’re similar campaigns such as BUBU for Uganda and BKBK for Kenya? Isn’t this going to cause conflict?
There will not be any conflict because you produce in your own country and sell to the region. If you produce and sell to Kenya or Kenya produces and sells to Uganda, which has been the case, then we are building East Africa.
The idea is to inculcate or change the culture and mindset of our people to focus on East Africa.

Why should you import body oils from Europe, Dubai or South Africa- when you can get them from Samona or Movit?
The question is the variance: Why would Kenyans or Tanzanians buy from West Africa and not from Uganda? This is the agenda we are trying to carry forward to encourage BEABEA to save our resources from leaving our region. This mindset should change and the result of this will be growing the EAC economies.

But the implementation of these initiatives is slow. How is EABC going to spur these strategies in a competitive world?
There is change taking place and changing mindset is a gradual process. Trade in the EAC region is liberalised-there is freedom of enterprise because of that you cannot force people to buy what they are not willing or ready to buy but encourage them to buy locally produced products.
So as the private sector, we are putting at the forefront these initiatives which encourage the population to buy their own. It is beyond our mandate to impose on people what they would wish to consume.
We would limit ourselves to providing benchmarks, promoting and ensuring there is a conducive and enabling environment. But the only way we can learn to love our products is to love them and this will build good brands. If we continue to buy foreign products, then the local capacities will be affected. We have the capacity and standards to produce standard products which are competitive. But our local companies are producing below capacity because there is low demand from local consumers.