Nairobi, Sunday, June 16, 2019:  Hundreds of delegates drawn from the 21 COMESA Members States have began arriving in Kenya to attend ministerial and technical meetings on infrastructure and industry.

The meetings include the 11th joint ministerial and technical committees meetings on transport and communications, information technology (IT) and energy and the 3rd ministerial and technical committee meeting on industry.

The technical meetings will run from 17 – 19 June with the ministerial meetings taking place thereafter on 20 -21 June 2019. All the meetings will take place at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies. Delegates started arriving in the Kenya Capital, on Sunday, June 16, 2019.

The technical meetings will be attended by Permanent/Principal Secretaries and senior officials and other stakeholders such as regulatory authorities, operators and operator’s association in the infrastructure sub-sectors.

The technical meetings on infrastructure will consider the progress made in the implementation of the soft and physical projects in transport, ICT and energy, and make recommendations for consideration by their respective ministers.

On the agenda of the meetings on industry, is the draft Action Plan on the COMESA Industrialization Strategy and the draft Local Content Policy and Strategy framework.

The expected outcome of these meetings is to come up with a sound Implementable Action Plan of the COMESA Industrial Strategy and an all-encompassing legal framework to guide local content policy and strategy development.

If adopted by the Ministers, the framework will build upon existing initiatives based on realities in each Member States.

The ministerial meetings will discuss and adopt or otherwise, the recommendations of the technical experts and make decisions that will be binding to all Member States and the COMESA Secretariat to implement.