While opening the 34th COMESA Intergovernmental Committee (IC) meeting held here yesterday, Ethiopian State Minister for Industry Dr. Mebratu Meles said diversification and value added export items will play vital role to enhance intra-regional trade.

He said “trade among COMESA member states has shown dramatic increase over the past few years. This can be considered as highly encouraging.” In 2014, intra-COMESA trade reached 20.9 billion USD.

However, it is low compared to non-COMESA countries because of the similarity on items produced by the countries.

Value addition would address this challenge while empowering small, medium and micro enterprises among member states, he said.

Furthermore he added, intensify efforts to industrial development and adding values instead of supplying row products, will help to address the challenge.

Supply side constraints, non-tariff barriers, monetary challenges, and restrictive visa and border control measures are the main challenges to increase volume of intra-regional trade, according to him.

Enhancing value added products and inclusive sustainable industry development is core among COMESA member states to boost intra-trade, Admasu Nebebe, United Nations Agency and Regional Economic Cooperation Director at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development said.

He argued that member states should give due attention to expand infrastructure networks and competiveness to enhance the trade relations between them.