{UAH} Tanzania sets terms for EAC - National - monitor.co.ug
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Tanzania sets terms for EAC - National
By Dorothy Nakaweesi & Ismail Musa Ladu
Posted Saturday, November 30 2013 at 02:00
Kampala-The tripartite arrangement, also known as the "coalition of the willing", involving Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda, has emerged as one of the sticky issues the Council of EAC Ministers had to deal with as they considered the Monetary Union protocol.
The protocol is a document that sets the stage for an eventual phasing out of all the national currencies and the establishment of a single regional legal tender.
The protocol, however, has since been considered and signed by the Council of Ministers and it now awaits endorsement of the EAC Heads of State today.
Tanzania not happy
It is understood that Tanzania is particularly unhappy with the tripartite arrangement, describing it as a recipe for disaster. In its recommendation to the heads of state, Tanzania maintains that the tripartite arrangement poses the risk to disintegrate the community rather than integrate it.
And for that, Tanzania, has also, among others things, recommended that all the plans and infrastructural project that the three countries endorsed mid this year should be revised and given a regional appeal, rather than it appearing as an initiative of the "coalition of the willing".
In an Interview with Saturday Monitor, Mr Samuel Sitta, Tanzania's East African Cooperation Minister, said: "Our concern is that we should not have an integration process of three countries but all the five East African countries."
He said his country has further recommended that all such tripartite arrangements must be sanctioned by the Secretariat as opposed to individual partner states.
It was also recommended that single custom territory, easing of clearance of goods at the entry point will apply across the board and not just to the three countries—Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.
Earlier, the Secretary General of the East African Community, Mr Richard Sezibera, and the Uganda State Minister for EAC Affairs, Mr Shem Bageine, said the "coalition of the willing" arrangement is a creation of the media and that all the partner states are in agreement, including application of the integration process.
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