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Corporate firms operating in East African region have been urged to consider joint ventures and partnerships if the bloc is to compete effectively with its peers across the continent.
East African Business Council (EABC) Chief executive Peter Mathuki said such a move would go a long way in improving the region’s growth percentage from the present 12 per cent, adding that to achieve this policies such as a review into the EAC-CET as a well as tax incentives should be prioritized.
“The EAC-CET Review process is an opportunity to strengthen our trade policies towards enhancing the competitiveness of the EAC regional bloc,” said Mathuki Thursday during the Council’s forum in Nairobi with Private sector players on Comprehensive Review of EAC Common External Tariff (CET) with the overall objective of developing private sector harmonized positions on EAC CET Review.
A joint venture involves two or more businesses pooling their resources and expertise to achieve a particular goal. The risks and rewards of the enterprise are also shared.The reasons behind forming a joint venture include business expansion, development of new products or moving into new markets,either within a particular region or overseas.
Available figures show that intra EAC trade is below 20 per cent compared to markets like SADC at 40 per cent and EU at 68 per cent, therefore, pointing on the need to strengthen public-private to improve regional intra trade to above 30 per cent in the next two years.
Barriers to trading across borders such as multiple product standard inspections, bureaucratic trade procedures delay business transactions and increase the cost of doing business. The time it takes to export is at an average of 76.hrs which is too high compared to 12.5 hours in OECD High-Income Economies, World Bank Ease of Doing Business report (2018).