The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) launched the first-ever comprehensive tool that measures how easy, or hard, it is to do business between African countries.
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The AfCFTA Country Business Index (ACBI) has three key objectives including assessing the perceived impact of the African Continental Free Trade Area on the private sector's ability to trade and invest across African borders once the Area is operational.
The idea that started in 2018 focuses explicitly on the constraints and challenges faced by private businesses, said Stephen Karingi, Director of the Regional Integration and Trade Division of UNECA.
Its launch was done in a side event during the 54th session of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Conference of Ministers in Dakar, Senegal.
"It will be used to identify key challenges that the private sector faces in its cross-border activities," he said.
As noted, the tool focuses on African integration by targeting businesses based in and trading across African countries.
The UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, Vera Songwe, said the ACBI "is yet another measurement infrastructure" that will help assess the extent to which broader developments related to integration and trade are implemented; as well as understand the business sector's perceptions of trading under free trade agreements already in force in African countries.
Vera Songwe, the UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, speaks at the 54th session of the ECA Conference of Ministers in Dakar.
It is not a measure of what a particular country is doing but a measure of how easy it is for someone in one country to set up a business in another country, Songwe said.
The Index aims to look at how easy it is to do business between African countries, to trade among each other and how easy it is for a Cameroonian, for example, to set up business in Kenya and vice versa.
It will help identify bottlenecks and address issues so that the African private sector can conduct business as seamlessly in their country of origin as anywhere else on the continent. ■