UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IN EA WORRY YOUTH LEADERS

Youth leaders in the East African Community (EAC) are worried by soaring unemployment among the young people in the bloc.

They want the partner states to urgently address the problem through relevant and workable policy interventions.

 The youth leaders, drawn from different groups, raised their concerns during a petition filed to the regional organization.

The petition was handed over to the  East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) Speaker Martin Ngoga recently.

A copy of the petition indicated that practically all the partner states faced the same crisis for their young generation.

In Tanzania, the youth unemployment rate for 2022 is projected to be around 12.6 percent.

Joblessness among Burundi and South Sudan youths in 2019 stood at  2.6 percent and 18.5 percent respectively.

In Kenya, lack of jobs for the young people increased in the first quarter of 2021, compared to the previous year.

In the age group between 20 to 24 years, the rate stood at 16.3 percent, up from 15 percent in quarter four of 2020.

The unemployment rate for youths in Uganda aged 18 to 30 is currently estimated to be 13.3 percent.

Rwanda,despite attracting many foreign direct investments (FDIs) in recent years, has the highest rate.

It averaged 22 percent from 2019 until 2021, reaching an all time high of 30.9 percent in the second quarter of 2021.

Nevertheless, a record low of 17.3 percent was recorded in the first quarter of 2020.

The petitioners were drawn from the EAC Youth Ambassadors Platform (EAC-YAP), Youth for Tax Justice Network and the national youth councils from the partner states.

They urged the partner states to review and adopt a range of harmonized domestic legislations and incentives for domestic taxes.

These are the excise duty, value added tax (VAT) and income tax for the EAC region.

The partner states were further urged to agree on a harmonized framework for Investment Incentives and Company Income Taxation Code.

"This code would place limits on what kinds of investment incentives could be offered and to whom", the petition said.

Additionally a regional transparent and rules-based system of investment incentives would benefit the jobless youths through access to information.

The EAC partner states also came under fire for failure to harmonize tax incentives which the youth representatives said impacted their chances for advancement.

The directive on harmonization of tax incentives was made by the EAC Council of Ministers, a powerful organ of the Community, in 2014.

"To this day, only a few partner states have complied and only in part to the directives", they said in their five page petition.

According to them, many EAC countries have made little progress in the harmonization of domestic taxes  and incentives.

"Other member countries are worried about the potential loss of revenues",they observed, noting that the scenario constituted a non-observance of Article 32 of the EAC Common Market Protocol and its attendant clauses.