The Ministerial Session of the 43rd East African Community (EAC) Sectoral Council on Trade, Industry, Finance and Investment (SCTIFI) has directed EAC member states to speed up the use of mobile applications to eliminate non-tariff barriers (NTBs), the EAC said in a statement Monday.
The statement said the ministerial session made the directive during its session on the weekend held at the EAC headquarters in Tanzania’s northern city of Arusha.
The statement said the app, named the EAC NTBs App, was developed to ease the reporting, monitoring, and elimination of NTBs within the bloc, a regional intergovernmental organization of eight member states of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania and Somalia.
The app was finalized and piloted during the national monitoring committee meetings in March 2023, according to the statement.
The statement said the app allows the users to report complaints in one of the three EAC official languages English, Kiswahili, and French.
NTBs refer to any obstacles to international trade that are not import or export duties, said the statement, adding that NTBs may take the form of import quotas, subsidies, customs delays, technical barriers, or other systems preventing or impeding trade.
