Despite growing fiscal pressures, East African Community (EAC) governments should continue providing financial and regulatory support to key export sectors – and more so to those that have shown resilience since the advent of the Covid pandemic.This is the finding of a new report on the impact of Covid-19 on East Africa commissioned by TradeMark East Africa (TMEA), the UN Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) and the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC).While the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of certain global value chains, the relative resilience of intra-regional trade has attested to the importance of strengthening regional value chains (RVCs), particularly as the region moves into the implementation stage of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).The report found that partner states should double down on policies to diversify their economies. Unlike previous crises, the pandemic has fortunately not been accompanied by an across-the-board decline in the relative prices of commodities. However, excessive commodity export dependence still exposed the regional economy to unnecessary risks. The AfCFTA could be instrumental in achieving this goal, reads the report.EAC governments and other relevant stakeholders should also address the challenges facing informal cross-border traders, according to the report, and should support the development and implementation of technological innovations to address the bottlenecks that have arisen during the pandemic along the Northern and Central Corridor. One case of good practice that was highlighted was the Regional Electronic Cargo and Driver Tracking System (RECDTS), which facilitates the issuance of the Covid-19 digital certificates mutually recognised by the partner states, and thus contributed to reducing delays at border points. However, the report noted that from a trade perspective the region was still not out of the woods as the pandemic’s rapidly evolving nature and its spillover effects may still present a threat to trade and commerce.
