The Ninth Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) opened in Kampala Monday morning, with a strong call for regional integration.

"Regional political, social and economic integration is not only desirable but a matter of survival for Africa," said Yoweri Museveni, president of the host country, who accepted the COMESA chair from Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Al-Bashir at the opening of the summit in Kampala, capital of Uganda.

Present at the two-day summit were nine heads of state and government, including President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia, Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and Bingu wa Mutharika, newly-elected president of Malawi.

With the theme "Deepening Regional Integration Through COMESA Customs Union" due to be established in December 2004 as a major milestone on Africa's way to regional integration, the summit will focus on topics like attracting trade, promoting investment, and building economic and business partnerships.

During the meeting, the leaders will also exchange views with participants at the First COMESA Business Summit, held along with the summit of heads of state and government, on such themes as free flow of people, liberalization of services or customs union rates, and how to better take advantage of business opportunities in the region.

Addressing the opening ceremony, the Ugandan president said measures should be taken to boost regional integration to increaseAfrica's share of the world economy.

"We can no longer continue to talk about regional economic integration without taking measures that will bring a single social, political and economic space," he said, urging for redoubled efforts in speedily removing tariffs and no-tariff barriers to trade among African countries.

Other leaders attending the meeting echoed his voice, calling for further steps to deepen regional integration.

The president of Zambia, where COMESA is based, said concerted efforts should be made in attracting investments that will contribute in alleviating poverty and promoting growth in Africa.

"Africa and indeed, our region (COMESA), face enormous development challenges requiring concerted efforts in attracting investments," Mwanawasa said.

While there is more cross-border investment in the developed world, he warned, developing countries have continued experiencing a stagnation in the flow of investment.

"It is in view of this imbalance that regional integration groupings such as COMESA have championed the need to promote tradeand investment within the region," he said.

Mutharika, who attended the COMESA summit for the first time, believed that COMESA faces serious challenges rather than opportunities in globalization.

"The COMESA countries are increasingly unable to take advantageof the global market expansion as their industries remain non-competitive," he said.

The Malawian president stressed the need for countries in the region to find new ways of facing together as one block the globalmarkets for African products, while supporting one another in accessing the markets of developed countries.

Africa has managed to keep its economy growing over the last eight years, with a rate of 3.6 percent in 2003, but the continentis still the poorest in the world, lagging far behind other regions.

While suffering such problems as severe poverty, unemployment,HIV/AIDS and conflicts, Africa is also frustrated by increasing competition from the other continents in globalization.

Experts say one major challenge facing Africa is to increase its share of the world's GDP, trade and investment, and to achieve this objective would entail maintaining a sustained growth of over7 percent with strong export performance.

To tackle the problems and realize their long-cherished dream of economic revival, African countries have chosen regional integration as a way out, through the development of regional and sub-regional organizations.

COMESA, set up in December 1994 to replace the Preferential Trade Area for Eastern and Southern Africa, is an African regional grouping of 19 countries with about 380 million people and a combined gross domestic product in excess of 180 billion US dollars.

Its members are Angola, Burundi, Comoros, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, the Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The premier African institution on regional integration, havingset up a free trade area in 2000, COMESA is soon to create a customs union and an economic community eventually. Its ultimate objective is for COMESA and other regional groups to amalgamate into an African economic community.

A customs union, widely considered as a vehicle for increasing the region's share in the world economy, through investment and trade in goods and services, means member states adopt a common tariff nomenclature, operate a common external tariff and implement common customs legislation, regulations and procedures.

To date about 80 percent of the work for the COMESA customs union has already been accomplished and what now remains is to agree the common external tariff rates, and on that basis determine a transition period for the customs union.

Source: Xinhua