COMESA REGION

Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe) – The organization for a common market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), has launched a single customs union yesterday during the 13th summit of the Head of States 2009.

Eritrea is a member of COMESA and is therefore taking part in the new customs union. The aim of the union is to facilitate trade between member states in a common market.

The COMESA customs union comes along with Eritrea’s recent announcement to introduce Free Trade Zones at the port of Massawa and Assab. As a result, the prospects for trade being stimulated in Eritrea look promising, because Eritrea has lowered trade fences for intra African as well as for overseas goods and products. 

The member countries have created one region in respect to their standardized customs system. For example, the abolishment of customs fees for certain goods traded between the member states themselves or the charging of the same rate of customs duty on goods imported from outside their territories.

The President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe, who took over the Chairmanship of COMESA for one year, called out to potential investors; ” We have a regional market for you, come to COMESA!”.

The outgoing Chairman and President of Kenya, Mwai Kibaki, encouraged the member states to stay committed to the regional organization, which has developed from a Preferential Trade Area (PTA) to the Free Trade Area (FTA) leading to the launch of the COMESA customs union.

Further, he announced that intra COMESA trade has reached the $15 billion mark in 2008, from $3.2 billion in 2001 when the COMESA FTA was introduced. Out of Eritrea’s total exports in 2007 approximately 8% were made to the COMESA region and 2% of imports came from the COMESA region (see table on the right).

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