September 11th, 2008….
Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, received the new COMESA Secretary General, Sindiso Ngwenya, in Cairo, on September 11th 2008. This is the first official visit for the bloc’s Secretary General to Cairo following his assumption of position during the extra-ordinary Summit of the COMESA held in Sharm El Sheikh, June 2008, on the side lines of Egypt's hosting the 11th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly.
Egypt is one of the first COMESA member states to be visited by the new Secretary General particularly that it hosts headquarters of the Regional Investment Agency for the COMESA. The headquarters agreement has been singed on the sidelines of the deliberations held between Foreign Minister and COMESA Secretary General. Spokesman for the Foreign Ministry stated.
The Regional Investment Agency was inaugurated in Cairo, June 2006 to encourage investment in member states and eliminate the barriers hindering the flow of foreign investments. Egypt was keen to host the headquarters as it believes in the importance of foreign investment role in boosting economic and industrial development. Egypt is currently working with the agency to crystallize co-operation frameworks and offers its expertise in order to attract foreign investments at the regional level to Eastern and Southern Africa.
Deliberations focused on a number of key issues on the top of which, the establishment of the COMESA Customs Union which is considered the next step towards consolidating the economic integration between the bloc’s member states, this was preceded by establishing free trade zone (FTZ) among the bloc states in 2000.
Spokesman referred that establishing the customs union, is the natural evolution for COMESA, it should be based on increasing the efficiency to benefit from the capabilities and several economic products and raw materials of the COMESA members states especially that the bloc includes 19 states, of 12 million km2 and 389 million people. Moreover, the economic importance of the bloc lies in volume of its total foreign exports which has reached 82 billion dollar while its foreign trade is 156 billion dollar.
The discussion tackled means of increasing the rate of inter-trade between bloc members whose annual growth rate amounted to 20%, exceeded 7.5 billion dollar, this is attributed to many countries joining the FTZ in addition to the special performance of the world trade when it comes to some specific products such as sugar, tea, corn, iron, steel and cement.
Spokesman outlined that some of the prominent states in exports are Kenya (900 million dollars annually) and Egypt (500 million dollars annually). In addition, the total annual trade volume between Egypt and COMESA reached 800 million dollars.