Egypt promises to activate COMESA mechanism

Economy Minister Youssef Butros Ghali announced floating new Egyptian initiatives to activate inter-COMESA trade and cooperation.

Egypt is the current President of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern African (COMESA) summit.

On the sidelines of the second day of the sixth COMESA summit, in session here, Ghali told reporters the initiatives include encouraging the private sector to contribute to building joint investment ventures to benefit from the COMESA incentives.

On setting up the Customs Union of the COMESA 20 member states by 2004, Ghali said no executive steps would take place on the Union except after implementing the fundamental rules of the Free Trade Area (FTA).

On the decrease of sovereign resources of customs and taxes of some member-states, Ghali said there is a trend to set up a fund to redress such problems to encourage them to join the FTA.

"An agreement was made among member-states to permit more customs reduction and lay frameworks to ensure the inflow of commodities and services to and from COMESA States, including an integrated insurance framework and a regional bank to facilitate payment," he said.

Ghali denied the existence of conditions set to promote the FTA.

"All FTA signatories...are convinced that their membership (of the FTA) will increase resources and exportation capability," he said.

This summit, Ghali noted, stressed the importance of activating the FTA, adding that a number of countries wanted to join it by October.