THE secretariat of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) has tabled a proposed budget of $64,40 million for 2015 which is a slight increase from $64,20 million in 2014.
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Assistant secretary-general in charge of administration and finance Ambassador Nagla El-Hussainy said the budget would be funded from contributions by member states and development partners.
El-Hussainy said the secretariat had undertaken an annual review of the formula of contributions based on the most available statistics.
She urged the committee comprising accounting officers from Comesa member states to persuade countries in debt to pay up their arrears to ensure the bloc has adequate funding.
The budget was presented to the committee as guided by the 2015 work programme whose main thrust is the consolidation of the Intra Comesa Trade through micro, small and medium enterprise development.
This is planned to be achieved through the six pillars, which are market integration, cross border economic infrastructure, industrialisation, institutional and regulatory policies, capacity building and support services and resource mobilisation.
The meeting was also presented with a proposal to introduce a Comesa Machine Readable Travel document in compliance with the International Civil Aviation Organisation Standards deadline of 2015.
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The first meeting of the Comesa Policy Organs started yesterday in Lusaka with a call to have member states to pay their contributions to the regular budget of the regional organisation.
Country delegates attending the administrative and budget committee was informed that by the end of November 2014, the secretariat had mobilised a total of $8,821 million from member states’ contributions.
