ECCAS/CEMAC regional experts finalise restructuring schemes

ECCAS/CEMAC regional experts finalise restructuring schemes Members of the third steering committee for the restructuring of regional economic communities in Central Africa are meeting in Yaounde.

Efforts to harmonise integration policies, programmes and instruments of the Economic Community of Central Africa, ECCAS, and the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa, CEMAC, are on a good footing with experts finalising five out of the 12 priority areas for complete restructuring pursuant to the African Union agenda.

The third meeting of the Steering Committee for the Restructuring of Regional Economic Communities in Central Africa, COPIL-CER, opened in Yaounde on April 21, 2015, prior to the meeting of Ministers in charge of Integration and Finance of ECCAS and CEMAC member States on April 24, 2015.

This Yaounde confab, that comes after that of 2010 and 2013, experts say, will serve as a platform to review the study setting up guiding principles on trade, free movement of persons and goods, peace and security and the financing of the institutions.

The resolutions of the confab are expected to serve as working document for the Ministers in charge of Integration and Finance of ECCAS and CEMAC member States. “They will constitute the basis on which these institutions will work,” said the Director in the Sub-Regional Office for Central Africa of the United Nations Commission for Africa, Emile Ahohe.

The Minister Delegate in the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Yaouba Abdoulaye, opened the four-day-brainstorming.

ECCAS and CEMAC have in the past used separate programmes which entail driving countries of the region in different directions. He stressed that harmonizing the prgrammes of the two institutions will facilitate the process of regional integration in which the countries can participate in meaningful development.

Experts however say the effort is not a merger per se, but cutting down cost. However, merging CEMAC and ECCAS has come under sharp controversy with arguments that unifying the institutions is more politically and institutionally difficult.