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COMESA Summit Calls on All Members to Join Free Trade Area
The sixth summit of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) on Wednesday called on all member states to join a free trade area (FTA), which took effect last October.
In a final communique issued at the end of the event, the summit lauded the achievements of the member states' which have joined the group's FTA and urged the rest to become part of the FTA "as soon as possible."
The summit endorsed the proposed program towards the establishment of the COMESA common external tariff and customs union by December 8, 2004, after leaders discussed ways of activating and enlarging the FTA, a vital step forward for the single customs target.
It also approved a proposal submitted by the Council of Ministers, which held a meeting here Monday, on designing and implementing a new cross-border payment arrangement within a year, in order to activate institutions to ensure success of the FTA.
The two-day summit explored ways of removing obstacles to expanding trade and economic cooperation among the member states to face the challenges of globalization.
The group's FTA was launched last October in Lusaka, Zambia, with nine countries signing up, aimed at forming a customs union by 2004 as well as a single currency and a common central bank by 2025.
The nine COMESA FTA signatories are Djibouti, Egypt, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The remaining 11 countries have promised to follow suit in the future.
African leaders speaking at the summit's opening session also called for an end to the numerous conflicts in the war-ravaged continent to provide opportunities for prosperity.
COMESA, set up in 1994, has a population of 380 million and covers about 32.28 million square kilometers. Its member states' gross domestic product stands at about 170 billion U.S. dollars.
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