Egypt exerts efforts to set fair competitiveness rules to liberalize African trade
Minister of Foreign Trade and Industry Rasheed Mohamed Rasheed opened Monday the round-table ministerial meetings of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).
The two-day meetings will address several issues, including African development and competitiveness in the African markets as well as augmenting the volume of trade exchange between Egypt and COMESA members and removing all exports obstacles.
Minister Rasheed, in an inaugural address, said the meetings come within the Egyptian government's efforts to promote inter-African ties in the economy and trade domains, ameliorate the African investment atmosphere and provide suitable conditions to increase competitiveness among all countries of the continent to meet global changes.
He spoke of economic reforms in Egypt and ambitious plans to allure more foreign investments and modernize the national industry.
Describing African as a very promising market, he said that Egyptian exports to this market reached $ 267.9 million in 2003.
Addressing the session, which brings together nearly 14 African trade ministers, COMESA Secretary General Erastus Jo Mwencha lauded the important role played by Egypt in serving the COMESA and backing its activities.
Ever since Egypt joined the bloc in 1998 the volume of its exports to the COMESA states have been up from US $ 40 million to almost $ 275 million last year, he said.
The Minister added that Egypt has been exerting efforts to set fair competitiveness rules that govern the inter-COMESA trade, referring to the recent measures Egypt took to liberalize its trade ties with the world.
An official from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) will address the first and second sessions of talks.
The third session will tackle the COMESA's competition draft law and some member states' unique experiments in protecting consumers.
The fourth session seeks to enhance economic integration between COMESA member states.
The treaty establishing COMESA was signed on November 5, 1993 in Kampala, Uganda, and was ratified a year later in Lilongwe, Malawi on December 8, 1994.
Member countries are Angola, Burundi, Comoros, D.R. Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
COMESA replaced the former Preferential Trade Area (PTA) 1 which had existed from the earlier days of 1981.