Washington, DC, September 29, 2011 -- World Bank economists and transport and private sector specialists agreed Thursday that an improved trade environment is crucial for Central Africa’s development and that it can only begin with better, fact-based dialogue among the region’s leaders. Speakers at a brown-bag-lunch conference – entitled “Towards a Transformative Trade and Transport Facilitation Strategy for Central Africa” – dialed in from as far away as Bangui (Central African Republic), Libreville (Gabon), Yaounde (Cameroon), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and Geneva. They included some of the Africa region’s top Bank economists and experts on the region’s trade and transport challenges. Underpinning the discussion was Central Africa’s importance to the future of pan-African trade and its status as the least-integrated region in the world. Dominique Njinkeu, who organized the conference, is the program coordinator of the Trade Facilitation Facility (TFF), a trust fund dedicated to improving conditions for international trade in low-income countries. On Thursday he outlined the trust fund’s history, explaining that it was designed to be a compliment to “hard infrastructure” projects, such as road building, and to instead address the more nuanced “soft infrastructure” issues, including the institutions that frame private industries, set government regulations and build processes around trade. Because these issues are inherently political, the Bank is often ill-equipped to promote change in soft infrastructure. Therefore, Gregory Binker, the Country Director for these countries said, it is vital that the client countries’ needs drive the definition of the strategy for improving trade in their region. The TFF’s work in Central Africa has focused along two trade corridors: one originating in Douala and another starting in Pointe Noire. Olivier Hartmann, a transport expert, reviewed the current problems along those corridors, breaking them down into issues specific to the gateways, the inland transportation and the inland terminals. He specifically highlighted the physical hurdles, such as the quality of facilities and transportation options, and documentation problems, such as excessive paperwork or poor coordination between customs agencies. Transport Specialist Peter Ngwa Taniform, speaking from Cameroon, addressed efforts to improve road safety. He noted that currently, traffic-related deaths cost between 1 percent and 5 percent of Africa’s gross domestic product. Among the initiatives to combat this loss are the development of a road safety curriculum for truck drivers and the collection of road-crash data, which can inform further interventions. From Geneva, Mombert Hoppe, a trade economist, talked about projects that address relations between neighboring countries: One targets improvement of trade between Nigeria and Cameroon with the aim of bringing together Central and West Africa; another aims to make it easier to move cargo and people between the two Congos and foster integration between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the entire CEMAC region. Njinkeu addressed a more overarching problem – the shortfalls in the implementation of a customs union that has been created among CEMAC countries, but is undermined by individual countries’ decisions to make exceptions to tariff and customs management regulations. To rectify these weaknesses in the customs union, he said, work needs to be done within Central African countries to harmonize tariff nomenclature, standardize customs management and payment systems, and reduce standards-related regulations. Two cross-cutting issues were stressed by speakers, particularly Raju Singh, the Lead economist and Senior transport specialist Charles Kunaka. First is the need to properly understand and factor political economy considerations into the design and implementation of trade facilitation interventions. Second is the need to properly empower the stakeholders and fully engage them throughout, from design to implementation and evaluation/impact assessment. Based in an assessment of existing programs, unaddressed challenges, and political resistance to trade reform in Central Africa, the panel of experts agreed Thursday that regional leaders should engage in a process that develops locally appropriate strategies for improvement; a point particularly stressed by Gilberto de Barros, a Senior Finance and Private Sector Specialist who primarily caters to the needs of the private sector. Njinkeu proposed a platform that could center dialogue around trade data and research. Shantayaan Devarajan, the Bank’s chief economist for the Africa Region, affirmed the importance of trade facilitation for the Bank’s strategy on the continent. He said the Bank’s trade facilitation experts should form strong and long-term partnerships with the governments involved and let debate build consensus on trade reform. The Country Director, Gregory Binker, concluded by registering his full support to the initiative. |
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