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China-Africa Trade Information Service
Photo by eac.int
By Dicta Asiimwe
East African Community law on the one-stop border posts (OSBPs) and the vehicle axle load control will not take effect until January over a technical lapse.
The laws were due to take effect on October 1 but for a failure to secure the signature of the new Heads of State Summit chairman, Tanzania President John Pombe Magufuli, in time. Alfred Kitolo, director of infrastructure service at Kenya's Ministry of East African Community Affairs, said the EAC Council will now have the gazette notice with the two laws signed during the EAC Summit in January, whereupon implementation can start.
The two laws were passed in 2013. Previously, after passage, a law would be moved to each of the five capitals (minus South Sudan which joined recently) to be signed by the president of the each member country.
As the EAC partner states wait for the January meeting to get the gazette notice signed, stop-gap measures are being implemented. "The delay did not affect business because the partner states were operating OSBPs based on bilateral agreements which were consistent with the OSBP Act," said Dennis Kashero, the communications director at TradeMark East Africa (TMEA).
The existence of these OSBPs has made it possible for TMEA's investments in the electronic single window and tracking system to become operational. These mean the Single Customs Territory (SCT) is also working in the EAC.
"It is just that the transporters have not yet adopted the new rules," says Mr Kitolo. While the axle load limit appears not to have changed, the existence of OSBPs has eased the movement of goods and services in East Africa. There is however a challenge for non-customs officials. The OSBP project only covered the integration of information and communications technology for customs systems like Asycuda (for Uganda and Rwanda) and Simba (for Kenya).
According to Mr Kitolo, in this case, an immigration official will have to physically move with the documents he worked with across the border, and feed them into the computers of the respective countries.
Lost time
"We want systems to talk to each other, so that officials from the different countries don't have to spend time asking what the other did," she said.