BY WINFRED KAGWE

EAST, South and Central African countries moved towards form-ing a Grand Free Trade Area with the opening of a high level summit of the three regional economic blocs yesterday.

Heads of states from Com-mon Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community (EAC) are negotiating towards estab-lishing a Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFRA).

They are meeting in Johan-nesburg to discuss harmonising policies on trade, customs and infrastructure development.

When realised, the TFRA is

expected to unleash enormous economic growth and develop-ment potential of Africa and will be a major milestone in the integration of the continent.

“In other parts of the world, countries with advanced levels of market integration trade more among themselves; produce more goods and services and have well developed infrastruc-ture. This leads to high economic growth and development as well as better living standards for the people,” said President Mwai Kibaki in his opening remarks.

The integration will encom-pass 26 countries with a com-bined gross domestic product of $860 billion (approx.Sh74 tril-lion) and a population of about 590 million people.

BY STAR CORRESPONDENT

EABL yesterday announced the resignation of Agnes Murgor as Group Legal Counsel with effect from July 1.

She will be returning to private practise as a partner of the � rm Murgor & Murgor, a legal � rm jointly run with her husband, former Director of Public Prosecutions Philip Murgor.

Murgor will however remain as EABL’s Group Company Secretary, a function she will undertake on a consultancy basis.

“While it is with regret that we accept Agnes’ resignation we are delighted that EABL will continue to bene� t from Agnes’ expertise and wise counsel in this on-going relationship,” said EABL’s Groop Managing Director and CEO Seni Adetu.

Philip con� rmed that Agnes would be re-joining the law � rm to head the commercial department noting that her tenure at EABL had strengthened her knowledge of commercial law.

BY MAUREEN MUDI

THE World Bank is seeking to ease trade barriers and en-sure cross border supply of professional services within the Commonwealth coun-tries.

The bank’s trade special-ist for poverty reduction and economic management net-work, Africa region, Nora Dihel, said policy action was required to eliminate dis-criminatory procurements.

This she said, included recommendations to have regional cooperation in re-moving restriction on the free movement of labor, in-cluding visa and immigra-tion laws, in East Africa.

Speaking in Mombasa at the close of the Common-wealth forum, Dihel said the bank had released a report on the professional services in Eastern and Southern Af-rican countries, key areas being trade, engineering and other high labor productivity areas.

The study, which covered 1,500 � rms in the region, noted that professionals

were missing in engineering and accounting services, and other middle level profes-sions.

“Our research has estab-lished that there is a skills mismatch, many graduates are not employed, profes-sional services is expensive and unaffordable, among other challenges,” said Dihel.

“We should have a mutu-al recognition agreement of

professional quali� cations, which will be an important progress in East Africa, and should be taken as a model for regional groupings” .

World Bank recommend-ed that trade liberalization should be coordinated with regulatory cooperation at the regional level.

While revealing that there were discussions over mak-ing the same achievable, the

of� cial noted that the differ-ence in regulations within party states was a key bar-rier, and argued that there should be draft agreements to harmonise the same.

“EAC countries have taken the � rst step towards mutual recognition of quali� cations and licensing in profession-al services by adopting the Common market protocol in 2009,” she said

THE STAR Monday, June 13, 2011 LOCAL 11

Can YOU outsmart the expert?

LABOUR MATTERS: World Bank trade specialist on poverty reduction and economic man-agement, Nora Dihel

Plans on for wider African trade Murgor steps down as EABL chief legal advisor

★business UP TO DATE, ACCURATE BUSINESS INFORMATIONNEWS YOU CAN USE, EVERY DAY

World Bank seeks free movement of labour

ALY KHAN’S STAR

PORTFOLIO

outsmart

ALY KHAN’S STAR

PORTFOLIO

ONE of my favourite movies is the docu-mentary about the fi ght between Muhammed Ali and George Foreman called When we were Kings.

When I need to mo-tivate myself I watch it. Muhammed Ali is being crushed, his corner is in tears and still he is whis-pering; ‘George, George Is that the best you have got?’ Muhammed Ali had no right to win and yet he did.

I also like the story of David and Goliath. Again David had no right to win that encounter either.

In fact, the evidence shows Davids win all the time. The political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak com-batants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. That is a remarkable fact given that Goliath in these examples was at least ten times as strong as David.

Arreguín-Toft won-dered, what happened when underdogs acknowledged their weakness and chose an

unconventional strat-egy? He went back and re-analyzed his data. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguín-Toft concluded, “even when

everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.”

I know this intui-tively and when I saw Arreguín-Toft’s empirical analysis, I realised there is a deeper truth in our universe, that we have reserves of strength we rarely tap into.

As I listened last week to the presentation by our Finance Minister, I thought to myself how do we unleash 40million Davids?

And My Conclusion is this.

The Finance Minster should actually cut taxes by something like 25 percent. He should unleash that entrepre-neurial spirit and make the tax rate so low that he will turn everyone honest.

I reckon far from los-ing out it will be a Win Win and the t century is all about Win Win.

Shares go up and down and readers are advised that this column represents Mr Satchu’s personal opinions.

HOW UHURU CAN IMRPOVE TAX COMPLIANCE

photos/ELKANA JACOB