Rwanda Hosts Regional Meeting on Harmonization of Tea Coffee Cocoa and related Products
Lemigo Hotel in Kigali, from 21st to 25th May 2018
While East African tea makes up only 26.1 per cent of world export value, it is well known for its ability to produce high quality teas and fetch high prices at auction. This high quality results from the high altitude and uniquely fertile soil of the region. In Rwanda, in the last five years, tea production has increased in terms of area covered and productivity; while this led to an increase of 39% of export values, the same development pace has been registered in almost all East African Community (EAC) Partner States.
As stipulated in the treaty establishing EAC, one of the objectives of the community is to develop policies and programmes aimed at widening and deepening cooperation among partner states in different sectors inter alia political, economic, social and cultural fields, research and technology. It is within the above perspective that standards in the sector of tea have been harmonized to serve as common language in order to increase the intra regional trade. The first batch of two standards was published in 2000 and was only covering black tea and glossary of terms used in tea trade.
Given the harmonized standard for only one product and considering that there are other factors that may influence bilateral trade, harmonization of black tea standard led to an increase of intra EAC trade as an increase of up to 4% was observed after the harmonization. There is no doubt that, this increase would have doubled or tripled if new products emanating from the development in research and technology within the region were standardized and the old standards revised and aligned with the current quality and safety requirements on the market.
Considering the above challenges of outdated standards and lack of standards for some potential products, from 21st to 25th May 2018 at Lemigo Hotel, Rwanda hosts regional meeting of the East African Technical Committee on Coffee, Cocoa, Tea and related Products (EASC/TC 02) to revise two (2) standards including black tea and glossary of terms used in tea; and harmonize four (4) new standards on green tea, blended black tea, flavored tea and instant tea.
In a bid to optimize advantages of the upcoming single large African market of up to 1.2 billion people and a collective Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of more than $2 trillion to be accessed through African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement signed in Kigali on 21st March this year. it is due time for EAC Partner States and EAC Secretariat to consider appropriate changes in policy, regulations, standards and conformity assessment procedures for the stated export priority products.
