EAC Told to Harness Chinese Growth Benefits

Tanzania Daily News (Dar es Salaam)

Sebastian Mrindoko

11 May 2011

EXPERTS have challenged East African Countries (EAC) to chart out strategies for harnessing the benefits emerging from the fast growing Chinese economies instead of blaming their influx as well as dominance on trade activities.

This was said on Wednesday by a senior lecturer with the University of Dar es Salaam, Dr Donath Ulomi, in an interview with the ‘Daily News’ over China’s supremacy in trade with the EAC.

“The fast expansion of the economies of China and other Asian countries is a unique opportunity for the EAC to accrue benefits by supplying the necessary raw materials needed in their factories,” he said.

To sustain the fast growing industrialization, he said the Asian nation is forced to go out especially to the emerging economies like Tanzania in search of raw materials and markets.

However, he noted that the China’s economic growth was likely to deepen an intense but silent battle for economic and political control of the emerging economies.

He added that the EAC increased attractiveness is linked to the formation of a common market which has created a market of about 126 million people which also allows for free movement of factors of production, goods and services among the five member states.

“An enlarged market should also act as a catalyst for fresh investments at the region with multinationals that shunned it due to its small size,” he said.

The Research and Poverty Alleviation (REPOA) Executive Director, Prof Samuel Wangwe, said the influx of Chinese investments into the EAC would open new opportunities but only if there were policies and strategies geared at harnessing them.

“We should line up our top priorities and the kind of investments which we need from them,” he said. He said the scramble between Asian and Western powers over raw materials and markets should be given a positive outlook in order to develop the emerging economies.

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