East Africa Economic Report

Ethiopian: The only profitable airline in Africa  Africa must eliminate import taxes and Prioritize of Air transport to actualize the Continental Free Trade Area, AfCFTA, born just slightly over a month ago.  Both decisions, say, experts, can result in rapid growth in intra-Africa trade.   Intra-Africa trade is hardly 15 percent of total trade in Africa. This means that dependence on taxes from the Intra-Africa trade to support fragile budgets is not significant. And with the US$1 billion compensation fund set by Afrexim Bank, the decision can be made immediately.   According to the UN Economic Commission for Africa,   UNECA, removal of import duties will increase intra-Africa trade by 52.3 percent, and double it if non-tariff barriers are removed. In other words, removing import taxes will raise intra-Africa trade to 23 percent in the short run. In the same breath, UNECA says that removal of nontariff barriers will double intra-Africa trade...

The stock of raw nuts:  Market boycott hurting Tanzania  Satan must be the inventor of that distribution system called free markets and its relatives, viz:  production, demand, price, and inflation!  The market is an unmitigated autocrat. Look, the animal, whatever its size and location, behaves in the same way; deciding who gets how much of what, who produces how much of what, who sells what to who, and how much of it.   This clan has no respect for anyone however powerful. Even governments dance to its dictates. Don’t be fooled. Those sweet-sounding documents going by the name policy are just responses to market dictates. No one dares to challenge this animal unless they are suicidal.   The market calls our desire for things, the demand which, it tells us, is unlimited.   Therefore to ration our demand, it introduced another relative called price – the money you pay to buy something.   Basically, the price is meant to ensure not ev...