Login

Register




Building capacity to help Africa trade better

COMESA accelerates implementation of investment tracking tools

News

COMESA accelerates implementation of investment tracking tools

COMESA accelerates implementation of investment tracking tools
Credit: COMSTAT

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern African (COMESA) on Thursday said that it’s fast-tracking the implementation of investment tracking systems in each of the 19 member states.

William Mut, Investment Policy Consultant with COMESA Regional Investment Agency (RIA), told Xinhua in Nairobi that the tools will allow member states to effectively compete for Foreign Direct Investments (FDI).

“The economic bloc’s growing middle-class is now changing the patterns of FDI from the extractive industries to the manufacturing and services sector,” Mut said on the sidelines of the COMESA RIA and Kenya Investment Authority investment workshop, a two-day event facilitated by the European Union Business Climate Facility.

Mut said the tools will help to facilitate and retain investments so as to make the COMESA region an attractive and profitable destination for investors.

Data from the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNICTAD) indicates that in the COMESA trading bloc, Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya experienced the largest increase in FDI since 2012.

Mut said the three states represented 25 percent of total COMESA’s FDI inflows last year, noting that the share of Sub Saharan Africa FDI projects in Africa reached an all time high in 2013.

He said that intra-African investment has also been growing in the past five years.

“Compared with other sources of FDI, intra-African projects are concentrated in manufacturing and services,” he said, adding that investment promotion is not an isolated activity and its success depends on strong collaboration between other organizations.

Kenya Investment Authority Research and Planning Manager Robert Bwire said between 2007 and 2013, FDI projects into Kenya increased at a compound annual rate of more than 40 percent.

He said that in the past two years, Kenya attracted the second highest number of FDI projects in Africa after South Africa, adding investors have increasingly been targeting Kenya as a springboard to the growing East African consumer markets.

Kenya is targeting to facilitate and register investment project proposals worth 1.68 billion U.S. dollars during the 2014/2015 financial year.

Contact

Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Tel +27 21 880 2010