Trade Facilitation in the EAC: Issues and Options

The paper discusses infrastructural and procedural challenges faced by EAC countries in implementing trade facilitation measures, and their effects on SMEs and consumer welfare. Procedural and infrastructural obstacles can be illustrated by the fact that the average import time in EAC nations is 27 days, as opposed to only 4 days in Singapore. This protracted importation duration presents a major problem especially for products that are time-sensitive such as the majority of agricultural or food products that comprise majority significant proportion of these countries’ economies.