Uganda will abolish work permit fees for Kenyans and Rwandan citizens from January 1, 2014, one of several reforms East African leaders launched on Monday to reduce the cost of doing business and speed up the movement of goods and people.

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya met in Kigali yesterday to sign off on a Single Customs Territory (SCT) for the three countries. President Salva Kiir of South Sudan also attended the event, which followed earlier infrastructure summits in Kampala in June and Mombasa in August.

President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania and Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi did not attend Monday's meeting.

Under the SCT, tax on goods imported into the three countries will be paid at Mombasa and trucks weighed only on crossing the border. In theory all the roadblocks from Mombasa to Kigali will be eliminated and the weighbridges reduced from nine to three at most.

The summit heard that a reduction in the number of roadblocks and weighbridges had reduced the time and cost of transporting goods from Mombasa to the interior. Transit time for containers from Mombasa to Kampala and Kigali has dropped from 18 days to five and from 22 days to eight respectively. This is expected to fall farther.

The cost of transporting a 20-foot container from Mombasa to Kigali is also expected to drop from $383 to $193, resulting into savings of about $45 million annually.

“There is still a long way to go,” host President Kagame said, “but we are encouraged by the progress made so far.”

President Kenyatta, who has pushed for reforms at Mombasa Port and along the highway to Malaba, said Kenya is committed to the effort.

“Today is a very happy day for me,” he said on his first visit to Rwanda as President. “I am very excited about the progress made in such a short time.”

The summit heard that ground-breaking for construction of the standard-gauge railway from Mombasa to Kigali will take place next month although details about final cost and source of funds are still to be hammered out. Kenya has finalised financing for the Mombasa-Nairobi leg but Uganda’s Finance Minister Maria Kiwanuka said that the total cost of the project will be computed and money pooled with each country paying for its part of the railway.

A spur to Juba, South Sudan, will be added to the project once South Sudan confirms its interest.

Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda were expected to announce the launch of a single tourist visa as early as next week at the World Travel Market tourism fair but the announcement is now expected at the next infrastructure summit – potentially in Juba, South Sudan – although the start date is still expected to be January 1, 2014.

Uganda’s decision to waive work permit fees follows similar moves by Uganda and Rwanda. Citizens of the two countries will still need to apply for permits but they will be issued free-of-charge.

South Sudan was formally admitted to the Coalition of the Willing – as the core of the three East African member states has come to be known – and President Salva Kiir said yesterday that East African citizens will now receive visas on arrival.

The three countries have made speedy progress over the last six months since the first infrastructure summit in Kampala and South Sudan has now been invited to indicate which projects it is interested in.

President Kiir indicated his country’s interest in building alliances away from Sudan by asking for a quick resolution of South Sudan’s application to join the East African Community, which will be discussed at next month’s Heads of State Summit.

He said President Omar Bashir’s recent visit to Juba was driven by the economic hardships in Khartoum sparked off by disputes over oil revenue sharing and trade between the two countries but South Sudan’s foreign economic policy will continue to evolve southward.

“We left them with their commodities and came to East Africa,” Mr Kiir said. “Our commitment [to the infrastructure projects] is real and we will do our best; I hope we will not be the ones to slow things down.”

Kenya and Rwanda have confirmed their interest in investing in the proposed oil refinery in western Uganda but work remains to be done on energy infrastructure projects between the three countries.

Uganda’s energy minister Irene Muloni said that a refinery was “a top priority” for Kampala but admitted that design and financing plans for a pipeline to export crude oil and another to import finished products will continue in coming months to be concluded by the end of the year.

In particular, the three countries will have to establish how to bring South Sudan into play as Juba weighs between building a pipeline to Djibouti or joining the regional LAPSSET project to terminate in a proposed refinery at Lamu in Kenya. Technocrats from the countries have also been asked to find ways of linking the crude oil pipeline from Uganda into the wider LAPSSET project.

The summit also agreed to establish a joint commodities exchange and manage air traffic jointly although this came short of a proposal by the ministers to fully implement the open skies agreement to reduce the cost of flights in the region.

@kalinaki
[email protected]