. Dr Scott

By MAIMBOLWA MULIKELELA –
ACTING President Guy Scott has challenged the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) to address non-tariff barriers in the spirit of regional integration.
Dr Scott said countries like Zambia were faced with tremendous difficulties in exporting and importing their products as a result of non-trade barriers.
“I have received complaints from the industry all the time on the non-trade barriers that they can’t move their products because of sanitary requirements that someone has brought in,” Dr Scott said.
He was speaking during the 33rd meeting of the Council of Ministers in Lusaka yesterday.
Dr Scott said it was disappointing to note that some countries had continued to request for the certification of yellow fever despite the low prevalence levels of the disease in the country.
“The tourism industry, for example, is made to suffer because of insistence from one of our neighbours to produce the certification despite the low levels of yellow fever prevalence in Zambia,” he said.
Dr Scott said he was concerned with the non-tariff barriers in the agriculture sector, citing sanitary measures imposed by countries such as South Africa.
“We have non-tariff barriers in the agriculture sector and we produce one of the cleanest and purest honey in the world but we can’t export to South Africa, for example, due to sanitary measures,” Dr Scott said.
The meeting was being held under the theme ‘Consolidating intra-COMESA trade through micro, small and medium enterprises development’.