HARARE – The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa region might annually gain $17,5 billion in intra-Comesa exports if all Member States fully implement digital trade facilitation reforms which involves use of paperless trade.
According to research findings presented at the 5th Comesa Annual Research Forum in Nairobi, five countries have the greatest intra-Comesa export trade potential for the region. These are Eritrea, Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Ethiopia.
The researcher, Adam Willie, Principal who is an economist in the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Enterprise Development of Zimbabwe, said this was based on their low baseline implementation score of the six digital trade facilitation measures in the study.
“The implementation scores used in the study only captured the paperless trade facilitation measures that enable efficient coodination and exchange of data and documents among government border agencies and business community within a country,” said Willie.
Top scorers under the assessment criteria were Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius and Rwanda. According to the researcher the top scorers have exhausted their potential to generate additional intra-Comesa exports with respect to scaling up implementation of the six e-s trade facilitation measures considered in this study.
Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Malawi, Swaziland, Seychelles, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe had medium implementation scores thus presenting significant potential to increase intra-Comesa trade by implementing the DFTA.
The study sought to investigate intra-Comesa exports gains resulting from full implementation of e-trade by Member States. In particular, the study sought to assess the impact of the current implementation level of e-trade facilitation on intra-Comesa exports and secondly, to estimate the regional gain in intra-COMESA exports when all Member States fully implement digital trade facilitation.
Arising from these findings, the study recommended policy change by countries with low to medium baseline implementation scores to scale up implementation of e-trade facilitation to realise the demonstrated potential benefits for the region.
“Efforts should be made to understand country specific circumstance on why they have not been able to scale up implementation,” said Willie noting that ‘one size fit all policies’ may not work as there is greater variability in baseline implementation levels.
