BY GRACE MACHA IN ARUSHA
Members of the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) have criticized revised dates for the single currency economy in the region.
They said often changing timelines and delays were not only counterproductive but have put the commitment of some regional leaders on question.
Abdullah Hasnu Makame,an MP from Tanzania, wondered as to why dates for attainment of full monetary union kept on changing without justifiable reasons.
"That the monetary union would be up and running by 2024....Then the Council (of Ministers) came and said we are going to extend the delivery time", he told the recently ended House sitting in Bujumbura.
The East African Community (EAC) Monetary Union protocol, which was signed on November 30, 2013, aims to converge the currencies of the partner states into a single currency.
Convergence of the currencies of all the seven EAC partner states into a single currency in the Community was to take 10 years followed by the launch of the common currency in 2024.
In the run-up to achieving a single currency, the member countries have to harmonise their monetary and fiscal policies as well as financial, payment and settlement systems.
Also geared for harmonization are financial accounting and reporting practices and policies and standards on statistical information.
Full attainment of the single currency will see the establishment of the East African Central Bank which will be preceded by the East African Monetary Institute (EAMI).
However, Mr. Makame said repeated delays of implementation of the protocol was impacting on the expected goodies like eased transactions at the borders.
Achieving the Monetary Union, he explained, would ease transactions including payments among the EAC citizens.
This, he told the House, would eliminate currency exchange challenges "as a single currency would be used across the region".
The Tanzanian lawmaker said he and others were yet to be convinced as to why the EAC Council of Ministers has pushed the delivery time (for the single currency) to 2031.
Ms Fatuma Ndangiza (Rwanda) stated that she was not surprised why the EAC single currency project kept on being pushed forward.
She said achieving the Monetary Union requires that the other two pillars of integration, namely Customs Union and the Common Market protocols, be "fully implemented and complied with by all EAC partner states".
She called for the establishment of the required institutions, including the EAM, the Statistics Bureau and other institutions to expedite the support of the EAC single currency.
The debate at the Eala session in the Burundi capital, according to a dispatch to the media, later extended to the trade regimes in the region.
Contributing to the debate, Mr. Makame underscored the importance of establishing the EAC trade remedies committee to address a raft of challenges .
The proposed committee would, among others, pave the way for implementation of the article 24 of the Customs Union protocol that came into legal force in 2005.
Renewed debate on the stalled EAC monetary union project followed a recent communique issued by the Monetary Affairs Committee (MAC) of the EAC member states.
It said the partner states' central banks had made significant strides towards establishment of key institutions that will operate under the monetary Union.
However, the Committee noted that a lot of work still needs to be done in the area of cross-border payment systems.
The member states must also agree to continue rolling out interoperability initiatives at national level and enhance the East African Payment System (EAPS).
Other stakeholders at the (Africa) continental level will also have to be engaged in further integration of cross-border payment systems.
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