By William Madouk
South Sudan has taken a significant step towards facilitating cross-border trade by establishing a National Coordination Committee (NCC).
This committee will implement the East African Community (EAC) harmonized framework for pre-packaged food and cosmetic products.
The NCC was formed yesterday after a two-day summit. Participants elected Mr. Moses Kur to chair the newly formed committee.
Gloria Nyoka, Executive Director of the National Bureau of Standards, announced that the NCC’s term will be three years.
The committee’s mandate includes implementing harmonized standards, removing trade barriers, and increasing export opportunities.
“We have been here for two days for the National Coordinating Committee formation, which is to coordinate issues to do with cross-border, which is concerning the pre-packed food and also cosmetics,” she said.
“This National Committee is to implement the SQMT Act of East African Standard Bodies to make sure that there is a fair facilitation of trade and also enhancing of the economy, not only in South Sudan but in all the region,” she added.
She made this remark at a just concluded two-day workshop on the EAC framework to facilitate cross-border trade in pre-packaged food products and cosmetics,
Ms. Nyoka emphasized that the East Africa Community is mulling exporting beyond its region and that can only happen if EAC adopts harmonized standards in which South Sudan is a part.
“That gives us the opportunity to venture into the global market,” she noted.
The Bureau of Standard boss, also cited that the committee would embark on sensitizing traders on the EAC framework on cross-border trade.
From her part, Ramadan Mfaume, senior Standard Officer at the Easy African Community Secretariat said “this National Coordinating Committee, their main focus is to facilitate the implementation of the EAC framework to facilitate cross-border trade of prepackaged goods and cosmetics.”
He added that prepackaged goods are one of the most traded goods in the EAC region.
He explained that EAC Developed a framework – A framework which provides for the constitution of the National Coordinating Committee for each partner state of EAC.
“So, the inauguration or the operationalization of this National Coordinating Committee in South Sudan will facilitate trade between South Sudan and the other partner states,”
The framework promotes the use of one standard, one certification quality mark, and one conformity assessment procedure in the registration, approval, certification and clearance of pre-packaged food products and cosmetics to promote intra-EAC trade among the partner states.
These include: South Sudan, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The development is aimed at providing a comprehensive harmonized approach to implement regulatory safety controls for food and cosmetics products based on the principles of risk-based preventive controls, equivalence, harmonization, mutual recognition among others.
The harmonized framework will further help to enhance cooperation and coordination among conformity assessment and regulatory bodies in ensuring the safety and quality of pre-packaged processed food products and cosmetics.