The Progressive Liberalization of Trade in Services under the East African Community Common Market Protocol: Reviewing its Trends in the Light of the World Trade Organization General Agreement on Trade in Services

Abstract

Five years after the coming into force of the East African Community Common Market (CMP), the Partner States of the East African Community (EAC) are now determined to move to the second round of negotiations aimed at achieving a progressively higher level of liberalization of free movement of services, labour, goods and capital. In this context, Partner States wish to address challenges and obstacles observed during the initial operationalization of the CMP moving forward. This article examines the proposals by the EAC Secretariat to amend the CMP and its schedule of commitments on trade in services in view of the Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community of 1999 (Treaty) and the World Trade Organization General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). It specifically examines the effectiveness and relevance of the proposals on market access provisions, delinking the schedules on trade in services and movement of workers, definition and categories of service providers, rectification of technical errors in citation of services sectors, and horizontal commitments as well as on the use of Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs) in opening up service sectors. It also presents the current status on trade in services under the CMP and highlights the major problems facing its full realization as including the limited resources in mainstreaming commitments made into national development policies, lack of an authority to run and manage the CMP, as well as the fact that the commitments were adopted without being fully negotiated. While the suggested proposals to amend the CMP are plausible, this paper submits that they need to be fully negotiated as most of them are borrowed from the GATS whose context may not necessarily fit that of the EAC. This includes the proposed definition and categories of natural persons subject to commitments under Mode Four as well as the adoption of horizontal commitments in delinking the schedule on the movement of services and movement of workers. Moreover, the call for MRAs among the Partner States has been highlighted under this article as a way of facilitating free movement of professionals in accordance with commitments under the CMP with a caution on the growing trend of the tendency to use MRAs in service sectors that are not offered by the CMP. The paper then concludes by providing appropriate recommendations also in the context of the proposed amendments to the CMP.