regional integration: linking regional … you will agree with me that this topic is extremely ......
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REGIONAL INTEGRATION:
LINKING REGIONAL AND NATIONAL PROGRAMMES
PRESENTATION BY
MR. SINDISO NGWENYA
COMESA SECRETARY GENERAL
AT THE EU-REGIONAL SEMINAR
25 MAY 2017, SHERATON HOTEL, DJIBOUTI
Your Excellency, Mr. llyas Moussa Dawaleh, Minister of Economy and Finance
in charge of Industry and EDF National Authorizing Officer, Djibouti,
Your Excellency, Mr. Stefano Manservisi, Director-General of the European,
Commission's Directorate General for International Cooperation and
Development (DEVCO),
Your Excellency, Mr. Koen Doens, Director for EU-Africa Relations, East and
Southern Africa, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, European Commission's
Directorate General for International Cooperation and Development (DEVCO)
Your Excellency, Mr. Koen Vervaeke, Managing Director Africa, European
External Action Service
His Excellency, Amb. Gama Mohamed Hassan, Minister of Planning,
Investment and Economic Development
My Colleagues the Chief Executive Officers of Sister Regional Economic
Communities
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen
Allow me from the onset, to use this opportunity to thank the organizers for the
invitation extended to me to participate at this very important event. Let me also
thank the Government and people of Djibouti for the warm welcome that has
been extended to us since our arrival. It is a privilege and great honour for me to
participate and contribute to this discussion on regional integration with
emphasis on linking regional and national programmes. I am sure, chairman
that you will agree with me that this topic is extremely broad to be tackled
within the time allocated for this presentation. I will however, subject to time
constraints, endeavour to highlight some few points that in my view are critical
and vital.
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen
Linking regional programmes to national programmes is a key priority.
Pursuant to this, regional organisations are legally mandated through their
treaties to ensure that this is executed diligently. Through the TREATY
establishing the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa region in
1994, the Heads of State and Government laid a very strong foundation and
ground work for regional integration wherein under article 6 (c) of the
COMESA TREATY, one of the fundamental principles is that there shall be
“Inter-State co-operation, harmonisation of policies and integration of
programmes among member states”. The high level policy and legal basis for
linking regional programmes to national programmes is clear. Subsequently,
COMESA policy and operational documents were drafted ensuring harmony
between regional and national programmes.
The current COMESA Medium Term Strategy (MTS, 2016-2020) was drafted
with this in mind. Ladies and Gentlemen, to avoid the danger of being too
abstract by bombarding you with theories, I will in my presentation make
reference to this MTS, to illustrate key priority regional programmes that have
to be harmonized with national programmes. I will also draw on my
experience with various international and regional cooperating partners. The
COMESA Treaty outlines a number of political and technical structures that are
responsible for linking regional and national programmes. The structures
include the following:
The Council of Ministers
The Secretariat
The Committee of Governors of Central Banks
The Inter-Governmental Committee
COMESA Technical Committees
The Consultative Committees of the Business Community and other interested
groups
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen
Based on the principle of subsidiarity, the above structures have supportive
roles, primarily driven by the need to ensure co-operation, harmonization,
consistency and linkage of regional and national programmes in various
sectors; such as peace and security, agriculture and food security,
industrialization and private sector development, infrastructure, trade
facilitation, climate, and social development programmes. Appropriate legal
instruments, regulatory directives, policies and protocols are used to facilitate
the development and implementation of COMESA regional programmes that
are then expected to be transposed at national level, pursuant to the COMESA
Treaty provisions of articles 10, 11, and 12 on Regulations, Directives and
Decisions”
Through the TREATY, there has been unwavering dedication, resolve,
determination and commitment by our Heads of States and Government to
regional integration. As such, the political commitment at the highest level
among COMESA Member States on linking regional programmes with national
programmes is not in doubt. This is reflected by bold decisions made over the
years towards deeper integration consistent with the Treaty provisions. It is
clear therefore, that there is consensus that regional and national programmes
should be harmonized and linked to each other. However, there have been
obstacles to the effective linking of national and regional programmes. These
challenges appear at all stages of the Programme Cycle. Ranging from:
How the policy dialogue and programming is done;
The way actual regional programmes are identified and formulated;
The way the budgeting and financing process is executed, and;
The approaches used in implementing, monitoring and evaluating
regional and national programmes.
Allow me to highlight some of the problems faced at the programming,
identification and formulation phases. It must be noted that COMESA policy
organs have recently approved the Medium Term Strategic Plan (MTSP) for the
period 2016-2020. Key development and strategic objectives under this new
MTSP cover the following main priority areas:
a. Industrialisation
b. Regional Infrastructure
c. Market Integration
d. Investments and Private Sector Development
e. Gender Equality and Social Development
In the spirit of harmonizing regional and national programmes, the expectation
is that all COMESA regional programmes are identified and formulated in a
way that respects the above priorities including ensuring ownership, alignment,
and harmonisation and managing for results. The other important issue relates
to the need to have appropriate sequencing of these priorities. While all these
priorities are supposed to be executed, it is important to note that member states
have specifically identified the need to address supply side constraints. In the
process, they have recommended the front-loading of those regional
programmes whose objectives is to address the identified supply side
constraints at national level.
A cursory examination of different regional programmes in the COMESA
region reveals that a higher share of the programme activities and resource
allocation is used for facilitation, coordination, capacity building and other
‘soft’ public sector projects. The main concern is that such programmes in most
cases are prepared without the involvement of the private sector who are
supposed to be the key drivers of regional integration. Whereas, it is not in
dispute that smart investments in public goods facilitate private sector
investments, this may not have been the case as these investments do not result
in "crowding in" of the private sector. This may partly explain why the EDF
support at both the national and regional levels may not have achieved the
expected results and impacts among other reasons.
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen
From the foregoing, one may be excused from asking a rhetorical question as to
why these investments have not been catalytic in "crowding in" the private
sector? One possible explanation is that there have been no radical reforms in
the way that the national and regional programs are conceptualized, designed
and implemented. This notwithstanding the laudable efforts by both the African
countries and the cooperating partners to draw lessons from previous funding
cycles. Unfortunately, these reforms have in some cases been halfhearted in that
they have tinkered with the conventional model of development cooperation. In
my view and assessment, this is not surprising as the key players in the
programming are the bureaucratic elite with a strong bias on procedures and
processes and not on tangible results and impacts. It is a fact that the
contribution by the private sector, civil society and other non-state actors has
been minimal.
It is against this background that the "destructive creation" of the existing
practices and policies through innovative smart partnerships between the public
and private sectors is urgently required; otherwise doing the same thing over
and over again will result in the perennial blame game by different actors
involved in development cooperation. This observation is consistent with the
new Germany Marshall Plan for Africa in its observation that “it is not the
Governments that will create the long term employment opportunities but the
private sector1”.
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen
The rationale for addressing supply side constraints takes into account the need
to transform COMESA economies away from perennial over reliance on
primary commodities and low value added products towards the promotion of
industrialization and value addition. This is meant to enhance structural
transformation, competitiveness, innovation and growth. Therefore any attempt
at formulating regional programmes not addressing identified root causes of
underdevelopment, is bound to face challenges at implementation level. Such
regional programmes may be perceived by member countries to have limited
short and long term benefits. This partly explains why there has been limited
appetite to transpose at country level those programmes that have little to do
with economic structural transformation. It is therefore important for regional
programmes to be harmonized with key priorities and be complementary to
programming taking place at national level including strong involvement of the
private sector.
Programming at regional level should ensure ownership and harmonisation
through involvement of a wide spectrum of relevant national stakeholders.
Regional organisations should be allowed to exercise their coordinating
mandate by clarifying regional strategies and ensuring broad dissemination of
information and involvement of relevant stakeholders (private sector and non-
state actors). To this effect, a recent transposition survey within the COMESA
1 P. 5 of the Germany Marshall Plan, Key Point 4 of 10: Entrepreneurship
region has observed that slow progress in terms of mainstreaming of regional
commitments in the national development plans has been higher for those
programmes perceived by member states as barely enhancing their
competitiveness and ability to trade.
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is in this context, that most member states have struggled to deal with the
removal of certain Barriers to Trade and Business delaying the
operationalization of the COMESA Customs Union and the launch of the
Common Market. As highlighted earlier, COMESA has implemented a number
of regional programmes with generous support from International Cooperating
Partners over the past few years. While these regional programmes have gone a
long way to assist the COMESA Secretariat to prepare trade facilitation
instruments and protocols in particular under the Free Trade Area (FTA), little
progress has however been achieved in terms of transposition of these
instruments at national level as member states took their time to ratify and
implement them.
During the transposition study, it was repeatedly mentioned by Member States
that supply side constraints, possible revenue losses from tariff reductions and
the competition associated with liberalization were the root causes of slow
progress in the signing, ratification and eventual implementation of
regional commitments. It is therefore important to design regional
programmes that target such root causes as opposed to those regional projects
that concentrate on addressing symptoms.
In addition, it has been noted that a significant share of regional programmes
concentrate on supporting downstream activities of regional value chains,
at the expense of the upstream activities. The upstream activities are
important as they deal with actual production, value creation and
transformation of inputs into the final tradable products. Member states
appear to favour regional programmes that complement them in addressing
challenges at the upstream level. It is therefore important for the regional
programmes to have a strong linkage with national programmes that seek to
restructure national economies away from high dependence on low value
primary and extractive commodities.
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen
The above observation is consistent with the new German Marshall Plan with
Africa (2017), Africa Union agenda 2063, the African Development Bank’s
industrialization strategy for Africa (2016-2025) dubbed “Industrialize Africa”,
and the other Regional Economic Communities (RECs) strategy papers that
have identified that the problem of Africa is not solely of trade
liberalization/trade facilitation, but largely a function of its economic structure
that is oriented towards trading in low value commodities as opposed to high
value manufactured goods.
The above policies that are explained further below are all characterized by the
desire to assist Africa to move away from over reliance on export of primary
resources in the agriculture, forestry and mining sectors to more value added
exports of light manufactures. I am personally interested in the provisions of the
new German Marshall Plan for Africa in particular on value creation. This
plan rightfully advises that Africa must move away from being a continent of
raw materials and that partners such as Germany can assist Africa through both
regional and national programmes to focus more on economic diversification,
the establishment of production value chains, targeted support for agriculture
and small to medium enterprises.
Having noted the importance of ensuring that regional programmes are aligned
to key priorities at national level, it is important to ensure that once this is done
appropriate, coordination implementation, monitoring and evaluation
structures are functional at both regional and national level. Weak (or absent)
functionary structures and systems at national level to support the
programming and implementation of regional programmes have been
found to reduce ownership at national level. Further weak legal or policy
framework, sectoral representation, requisite authority and coordination and
accountability mechanisms have led to slow progress in the transposition of
regional programmes.
Regional programmes should therefore align with national programmes that are
oriented towards addressing such challenges. National mechanisms for
economic cooperation and integration need to be well equipped, capacitated
and structured to ensure that integration measures are effectively implemented.
There is need for technical assistance to, among others, undertake in-depth
studies, formulate policies, design and implement programmes; and assess
progress, impact and implications of programmes and projects. It also important
for various government departments, the private sector, non-state actors,
academia, women and youth groups, judiciary and legislative structures to be
familiar with regional commitments and programmes.
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen
Lack of financial resources is among the most frequently cited reasons (by
Member States) for poor implementation of Council and Authority decisions. It
is on this basis that innovative resource mobilization strategies should be put in
place by member states in order to finance regional priorities and programmes
including the coordination work of the Secretariat. Last but not least, it is
important to put in place strong M&E systems to track implementation and its
challenges in order to inform planning and strategic decision making. It must
also be noted that International Cooperation Partners’ (ICP) technical and
financial support at country level in most cases remain poorly aligned to
regional integration priorities and targets.
In conclusion, my view is that for regional integration to work well, regional
and national programmes need to be harmonized by addressing the following:
• Regional programmes should be designed in close collaboration with
national authorities including representatives of the private sector and
non-state actors.
• Regional Programmes should be guided by national priorities and must
be harmonized with various phases of domestic and regional value
chains.
• National coordinating structures should be strengthened to execute both
policy and technical provisions of the treaties establishing regional
communities.
• Promote innovative smart partnerships between the public and private
sectors
• Partners can assist by ensuring that their support schemes are driven by
each region’s specific priorities in order to enhance ownership and
sustainability. In this regards, partners should consider assisting
COMESA and other RECs to address some of their supply side
constraints at country level. COMESA and other RECs would benefit
from continued improvement in business and social infrastructure and
promotion of sustainable sectorial policies.
• There is need to continue supporting efforts that promote regional peace
and stability in order to sustain regional programmes
• There is a need to change the way co-operating partners deliver their aid
by putting more emphasis on supporting the private sector to produce
more tradable goods as opposed to investing in public goods which may
be delivered through smart public private partnerships
• Partners should consider leveraging/blending grants with loans for their
support to be valuable and produce sustainable results and much more
support should be directed at developing the domestic resource
mobilization capability of partner States
I thank you