EABC in anti-illicit trade campaign

EABC chief executive officer, Ms Lillian Awinja.

What you need to know:

East Africa is still plagued with illicit trade as Dorothy Nakaweesi writes.

Although progress has been made in several areas, a lot more still ought to be done to win the fight against illicit trade, the East African Business Council (EABC) chief executive officer, Ms Lillian Awinja, has said.
Illicit trade includes, but is not limited to, intellectual property infringements and trade in substandard goods that pose or cause health or safety risks, parallel imports and undeclared local production, smuggling of excisable goods and a variety of illicit financial flows.

Ms Awinja said: “Evaluation of illicit trade and its effects is challenging, as such trade operates outside of the law, making it hard to access data on it.”

In trying to address this vice, the EABC in collaboration with Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) and Kenya’s government are organising a high level second Regional Anti-Illicit Trade Conference in Nairobi, Kenya in September.
“What is certain, however, is that illicit trade is driven by the economic opportunity it offers vendors to make money illegitimately in an environment wherein opportunity for economic benefit is perceived to outweigh the actual risks involved,” Ms Awinja shared.

In an earlier interview with this newspaper, Uganda Revenue Authority’s commissioner general, Doris Akol, shared that although smuggling is a challenge, it’s not Uganda’s biggest problem.

“What we are looking at now is the shift in the way it’s done. Before, people used to do through routes which are not gazetted. It’s now document fraud aiding smuggling. You get a document reading something else with a lower tax value or get containers reading one item and the declaration concealed different items,” Ms Akol said.

Uganda is said to lose $1.4 billion (Shs4.7 trillion) equivalent to almost 5.5 per cent of its gross domestic product.
Tanzania is, in turn, estimated to lose about $1.5 billion (Shs5 trillion) in revenue to counterfeits; while estimates a loss of over $500 million (Shs1.6 trillion) annually to illicit trade and its estimated government loses of more than $350 million (Shs1.1 trillion).

The EABC in partnership with the EAC and the government of Kenya held the first regional Anti-Illicit Trade Conference in October 2010, where a number of recommendations were made.

Conference Agenda
The issues. Issues to be discussed are the status of the regional and national regulatory frameworks for combating various forms of illicit trade; what needs to be done to strengthen these frameworks; achieving effective enforcement; the factors contributing to illicit trade, and how best to address them.