Effects of East Africa Community Intergration Initiatives on Trade Volumes in the Region
Abstract
Regional integration is a strategy geared towards achieving collaboration among the region
member states to realize a number of objectives. The East African Community through regional
integration has put in place a number of trade facilitation initiatives that include: business
flexibility, improvement in operations, adopting of regional standards and efficiency. The study
sought to determine the effect of EAC integration initiatives on trade volumes in the region. The
study was anchored on country similarity theory, comparative advantage theory and economic
integration theory. The research was guided with two objectives namely: to establish the rating
of integration initiatives towards trade facilitation in the EAC in the past five years and to
establish the relationship between the EAC integration trade facilitation initiatives and the
region’s trade volumes. The research adopted a descriptive cross sectional survey. The EAC was
the population of study and purposive sampling was used to identify the respondents. The data
analyzed was gathered using close ended questionnaires. The results were analyzed using
descriptive statistics and regression model and presented using tables. The findings indicated that
EAC integrations initiatives have a high rating in the following order: the initiatives that
facilitate faster operations, followed by efficiency facilitating initiatives, then initiatives that
relate to standard procedures and lastly those that enhance flexibility. The effect of EAC
integration initiatives test against trade volumes revealed that the initiatives that enhance
operations, efficiency and standards are positively related to trade volumes while flexibility
enhancing initiatives are negatively related to trade volumes in the region. The EAC should
improve further on implementation framework of integration initiatives that relate to standards,
operations and efficiency. There is need to interrogate the reason for minimal success in
implementation of flexibility initiatives. The EAC member states should also strengthen their
integration initiatives in setting up uniform customs standards and structures, streamlining
operations and also consider putting in place incentives for efficient players in the logistics
chain. This will contribute to realization of increase in trade volumes and thus spur regional
growth. Owing to time constraints and resource limitation, a further study on the same is
recommended with a focus on the business operators.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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