Lusaka, Monday, April 1, 2019:COMESA will convene an extra ordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers  Friday this week in Lusaka, Zambia, to deal with pressing administrative and finance matters.

This will be the seventh extra ordinary meeting of the Council.

It will be preceded by the Intergovernmental Committee meeting, on 3 – 4 April 2019, which brings together accounting officers in the ministries that coordinate COMESA programmes at the national level who will prepare the report to be adopted by the Council.

Key matters in the agenda is the status of Member States’ contribution to the Secretariat budget .

The ministers will also be briefed on key regional integration programmes including the Tripartite Free Trade Area Agreement, the Continental Free Trade Area Agreement and Trade. Member States’ level of compliance with their obligations under the COMESA Treaty particularly on customs matters will be discussed.

The extra-ordinary meeting was set during the 39th ordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers that took place in Lusaka, Zambia  in November 2019. The last extra-ordinary meetings took place in 2016.