Tanzania’s business leaders on Tuesday opened up to Secretary General of the East African Community (EAC) Veronica Nduva, detailing a myriad of hurdles they face in negotiating the bloc’s intra-trade challenges, saying political goodwill was needed to make regional trade integration a success.

Meeting Nduva in Dar es Salaam under the East African Business Council (EABC) banner, they pointed to delays in harmonising taxes between countries and in removing persistent restrictions on cross-border trade as major reasons why the concept remained more of a theory than a reality.

It was their first face-to-face interaction with the EAC chief executive since she was appointed in mid-2024, and was part of her current itinerary of visits to member states to gauge private sector feelings on integration in each of them.

Quick policy adjustments that the Tanzanian private sector representatives proposed to smooth out bumps they believe still exist in the EAC intra-trade landscape include ratifying the proposed EAC Double Taxation Agreement as a positive step towards eventually eliminating discriminatory taxes, excise duties, and levies on EAC-originating goods.

“We need to address the real issues stopping us from achieving our common goal of trade integration,” said Hussein Sufiani, chairperson of the Confederation of Tanzania Industries (CTI), as he urged local manufacturers and businesses to actively engage in such dialogues so their ideas can be included in EAC policy formulations and decision-making processes.

Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF) chairperson Angelina Ngalula called on Ms Nduva to arrange a private sector dialogue with EAC heads of state during one of their summits as a good start to “building political goodwill.”Many of the issues raised during the one-day dialogue have been recurring themes in long-running conversations about the EAC Customs Protocol and its implementation: uniform application of EAC Common External Tariffs, tax harmonisation and non-tariff barriers, operationalising the EAC Trade Remedies Committee, and fully liberalising trade in services.

Flavia Businge, the EAC secretariat’s director of customs and trade, who accompanied Nduva to Dar, said the proposed double taxation agreement will offer more clarity once it becomes applicable, adding, however, that “this unfortunately won’t be until all the EAC member states have endorsed it.”She told the meeting that the issue of discriminatory taxes imposed under national laws would be discussed in depth at the EAC secretariat meeting in Arusha on Monday, September 22.“We have received lists of concerns on this score from Uganda and Kenya, but as of today (Tuesday), Tanzania has not yet submitted its own list,” Ms Businge said.

According to figures presented by EABC executive director Adrian Njau, while the EAC’s total global trade value stood at $109 billion in 2023, only $19 billion of this was between EAC countries.

Tanzania led at $4.9 billion, followed by Kenya at $2.8 billion and Uganda at $2.1 billion.

Ms Nduva outlined core issues shaping the regional trade discourse, from persistent NTBs to the need for digitalisation and institutional reforms.“Our ambitious target is to increase intra-EAC trade by 40 percent by 2030,” she said. “Reaching this milestone requires us to ask ourselves some tough but necessary questions: Is the private sector voice strong enough? Where do we draw the line between national interests and regional benefits? And whose perspectives are still missing from the conversation?”

“Manufactured goods account for less than 30 percent of exports, mostly in low-tech products such as cement, textiles, and basic chemicals. Our export basket is still dominated by raw agricultural commodities, offering limited value addition and constrained opportunities for decent job creation,” Ms Nduva said.

The dialogue was opened by Tanzania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation, Mahmoud Thabit Kombo, who said the country’s private sector needed to be “more proactive” in engaging his ministry to unlock opportunities in intra-EAC trade and investments.

Mr Kombo said that the EAC is the only economic bloc where Tanzania, as a member, has assigned a permanent secretary in the foreign ministry fully dedicated to consolidating cooperation ties.

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