News

The Federation of National Association of Women in Business, Zimbabwe Chapter has reached a new milestone with the launch of a micro-finance institution to support women economic empowerment. The institution, known as Empowered Woman Excel SAACO Bank, which was launched last month targets women in various sectors including agribusiness, teaching, mining, handicrafts and textiles, transportation,…
Read more

The year on year, inflation rate in the COMESA region as measured by the Harmonized Consumer Price Index (HCPI-COMESA) stood at 49.0% for the month of May 2020, up from 43.4% registered in April 2020. A year earlier the rate was at 21.2%. According to the latest HCPI report, the latest month on month inflation…
Read more

The Eastern-Africa, Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean (EA-SA-IO) is developing a framework for regulatory oversight for the regional energy market to guide cross border power trading. The final report of the framework has now been presented to the COMESA Regional Association of Energy Regulators for  Eastern and Southern Africa (RAERESA) by the Consultants contracted…
Read more

Lusaka, July 17, 2020: COMESA has developed an online portal to be used by Member States to exchange information on availability of essential products within the region. This is in response to a directive issued by the COMESA Council of Ministers in May this year to develop the platform to support regional trade, during the…
Read more

At least 82% of the reported Non-Tariff Barriers in the COMESA region are those imposed on imports and exports of goods and services and are largely operational by design. According to trade experts, these type of NTBs are easy to identify and monitor. Thus, from an analytical perspective, the relatively high rate of resolution of…
Read more

Most countries in the COMESA region have recorded an above average yield in the production of staple foods for the 2019/2020 farming season, and this is expected to reduce hunger among the 560 million people. According to COMESA Seed Expert Dr John Mukuka, the increase is due to the fact that 90% of the 80…
Read more

COMESA Secretariat has received $1.1 million funding from the African Development Fund (AfDB) for the implementation of the Tripartite Capacity Building Programme Phase II. The funds will support COMESA, East African Community (EAC) and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and their Member States to operationalize the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA), a major milestone…
Read more

The World Bank funded Great Lakes Trade Facilitation Project (GLTFP) has launched a three-months study to develop appropriate strategies of maintaining and sustaining the Trade Information Desk Offices (TIDOs) at the border points. The objective is to enable the TIDOs to continue facilitating cross border trade beyond the timelines of the main project which ends…
Read more