The Secretariat will convene a meeting of the policy think tanks and private sector in the region to brief them on the frontier issues for research necessary to support regional integration. This follows the COMESA Council of Ministers directive issued during its 34th meeting held in Addis Ababa.

The Council observed that policy research can directly support regional integration by addressing practical challenges and directed COMESA to embrace the Triple Helix Concept of collaboration between the Government, private sector and academia in implementing the research programme.

The decision of the Council was informed by critical studies that the COMESA Research Programme (CRP) has conducted in the past one year and whose findings have potentially high impact on policy and decision making.

The first one was an audit of the existing non-tariff barriers (NTBs) among COMESA Member States and assessment of their impact and another on intra-COMESA Trade. The second was on Intra-COMESA trade potential analysis which revealed that COMESA has a potential to increase its trade by US $96.7 billion.

The research programme was launched in 2013 with US $3 million kitty from the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF). The objective was to enhance the capacity of the COMESA Secretariat in economic and trade policy analysis and research.

“The research programme is playing an important role in providing evidence based policy research and bridging the gap which has existed at the Secretariat,” the Minister noted. “However, there is need for COMESA to develop a sustainability plan to ensure that the programme is maintained once the grant funds have been exhausted.”

In the study on the impact of NTBs, it was found that out of 476 NTBs reported on the online system, 385 had been resolved and 84 were still pending while seven are non-actionable.

On the Intra-COMESA trade study, the sectors found with the highest trade potential were textiles, wooden furniture, horticultural products, household items, hides and skins, footwear and leather products, Portland cement, coffee and tea concentrates, natural gum, precious metals, refined copper and copper alloys, essential oils, jewellery and white and red meat.

Besides the two studies, the CRP supported the Secretariat in undertaking in-house analysis and studies including: the sugar competitiveness study which was key in establishing the extension of the Kenyan Sugar safeguard. It has also been involved in the analysis of the Common External Tariffs harmonization between the four EAC member States and COMESA.