The ongoing negotiations on integrating trade and infrastructure among Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda do not violate the East African Community treaty, the ministry of EAC, Commerce and Tourism said yesterday. <\/p>\n
Integration secretary Barrack Ndegwa said the EAC treaty allows members to sign bilateral or tri-lateral deals provided they leave room for others to later join. <\/p>\n
He was responding to Monday\u2019s resistance by Tanzania that the so-called \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d was violating article 7(1) (e) of the EAC common market protocol signed in July 2010. <\/p>\n
Tanzania\u2019s ministry of East African Co-operation protested the coalition\u2019s pact on a joint regional railway, pipeline and oil refinery in June, and ongoing discussions on common travel documents ahead of their third infrastructure summit next month in Kigali.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though this article allows member countries to enter bi-lateral or tri-lateral agreements, it is a must that issues under consideration for implementation under this arrangement are fully discussed and agreed upon by all member countries,\u201d the ministry said in a statement. <\/p>\n
Ndegwa however said the treaty does not bind all the EAC members to agree before a deal among some of them is signed. He cited the provision for a common EAC identity card in the protocol that Tanzania did not support.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe common market protocol is a negotiated arrangement and we should not hammer Tanzania because they are free to engage or not to engage depending on their interest,\u201d he said in a telephone interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cImplementation of the treaty is however normally good when all the five members are in agreement.\u201d Ndegwa had on October 8 called for speedy amendments to national laws to align them to the EAC treaty so citizens could fully enjoy benefits of the protocol signed in July 2010. Tanzania\u2019s EAC ministry spokesperson Vedastina Justinian had also registered his government\u2019s displeasure with the \u201ccoalition of the three countries…. being run under their respective foreign affairs dockets and not through the EAC secretariat.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Star<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ongoing negotiations on integrating trade and infrastructure among Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda do not violate the East African Community treaty, the ministry of EAC, Commerce and Tourism said yesterday. Integration secretary Barrack Ndegwa said the EAC treaty allows members to sign bilateral or tri-lateral deals provided they leave room for others to later join. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000048967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-11114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000048967,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11114.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11114.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11114.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11114.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11114.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11114.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000048967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11114"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=11114"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=11114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}