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World Bank, to sign MoU with EAC
2006-07-17 08:50:21
By Modestus Kessy, Arusha
The World Bank is happy with East African Community’s efforts in trade liberalization, development of regional infrastructure and looks forward to signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the community, which will push the momentum higher.
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said on Thursday that the community’s effort would boost trade within the block as well as internationally.
The World Bank will continue supporting EAC in the identified priority areas, including the Lake Victoria Basin development, energy and power as well as transport and communications infrastructure development, he said.
In the next few months, EAC and World Bank officials will be working out a project proposal that will relate the identified priority areas to specific projects for implementation in the short, medium and long terms, he said.
’’These parameters will also constitute the basis for the MoU to be signed between EAC and the World Bank,’’ he said.
Meanwhile, the Secretary General of the EAC, Ambassador Juma Mwapachu emphasised the role of regional economic communities (RECs) in African development, noting that economic integration was on the upswing throughout the continent.
He said individual African countries, acting alone, were often too small to build effective capacity for productive economies and competitive trade.
He said the Third EAC Development Strategy (2006-2010), which will soon to be launched, addresses serious shortfalls in energy, transport and communications sectors, which are a drawback to the region’s development prospects.
He said the EAC partner states would chart out areas of shared investments, particularly in energy, roads and railways infrastructure modernisation.
This will help to unlock supply side bottlenecks and open up new opportunities to place the region on a competitive landscape, he said.
The meeting in Arusha is the first that the World Bank President has held with an African regional economic community and signifies the confidence of the World Bank in the East African Community.
Mwapachu met Wolfowitz at Coffee Lodge in Arusha. With him were the Minister for Finance, Zakia Meghji and other bureaucrats from the community.
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