Kenya secures Comesa grant to speed integration

Henry Rotich

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern African has advanced Sh295 million (€2.46 million) to Kenya to facilitate the deepening of regional integration.
The regional body signed the grant with Kenya to give the country access to €2.46 million from the Comesa Adjustment Facility (Comesa-CAF).

The funds will be used to support regional integration programmes.
The facility is expected to tackle various hurdles that have stood in the way of enhancing trade and other cross border activities within the Comesa and East African Community blocs, including addressing issues of tariff barriers along major transport corridors.

The agreement was signed by Cabinet Secretary National Treasury, Henry Rotich and Sindiso Ngwenya, Comesa Secretary General.
“Under the agreement, €2,469,963 would be available to Kenya to support domestication and implementation of regional commitments at the national level to enhance integration agenda,” indicated a Statement from Comesa secretariat.

The current agreement is an addendum to a previous one signed in 2013, which provided €1,764,345, bringing the total funding to €4,234,309.
An additional indicative amount of € 4,730,805 (Sh554 million) is available for Kenya under the Adjustment Facility for the next two years and will be disbursed based on progress under the regional integration framework of the Comesa and EAC region.

The current funding under the Comesa-CAF is provided under the 9th European Development Fund Regional Integration Support Mechanism (RISM) programme. Kenya’s submission was approved by the Comesa Fund Ministerial Committee in September 2013.

The support provided to Kenya has already contributed to eliminating Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) that hinder trade and to setting up of a co-ordinating committee and secretariat that deals with regional integration matters at the national level.
In an effort to enhance regional integration, Kenya has restructured the Government institutional structure pooling together departments implementing regional integration programmes and institutionalised wide stakeholder participation in policy and implementation of regional commitments.

“Going forward, the country expects to improve its business environment by ensuring that the transit transport facilitation instruments such as vehicle dimensions and axle load limits are configured in line with Comesa and the East African Community,” said the statement.