Relief as Dar strikes out fee for EA trucks
Photo/FILE
Trucks at the Malaba border point. From now on transit vehicles will be weighed twice from the port of entry and port of exit for Kenya, Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda while Tanzania awaits the findings of a study on the establishment of the weighbridges.
Tanzania will now scrap a $200 (Sh16,400) fee for trucks entering the country from East Africa and waive visa on visiting business people from the region.
This was among key decisions made by a ministerial meeting of the East African Community (EAC) partner states in Mombasa convened to address the non-tariff barriers.
The countries also agreed to remove roadblocks and replace them with electronic cargo tracking systems and police patrols by December.
Announcing the measures in Nairobi at the weekend, the chair of the EAC Council of Ministers, Mr Musa Sirma, said the steps were taken to eliminate barriers hurting intra-regional trade and free movement of people in the region.
“Trucks entering Tanzania will not be charged $200 as well as the visa charges on businessmen entering the country will be eliminated,” the EAC minister said.
It was also decided that Container Freight Services companies will now charge the same rates as port authorities.
Tanzania and Kenya decided to reduce road blocks on the northern and central corridors from 30 to 15 and 36 to five respectively, while Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda decided to abolish them completely.
The partner states also agreed to identify borders and port to be put on 24-hour operations.
Such information should be communicated to the EAC Secretariat in Arusha, Tanzania within two weeks.
The ministers further agreed on the recognition of standards of each partner states’ respective authorities charged to test in-coming or export goods.
It was resolved that Certificates of Rules of Origin from each partner state should be fully recognised by other member countries in the economic bloc.
From now on transit vehicles will be weighed twice from the port of entry and port of exit for Kenya, Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda while Tanzania awaits the findings of a study on the establishment of the weighbridges.
The resolutions of the Mombasa meeting were handed over to President Kibaki who is the current Chair of the EAC Heads of State Summit in Nairobi on Saturday.
