Museveni to address EALA

President Yoweri Museveni

The Chairperson of EAC Summit, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, will use his State of the EAC Address to a special sitting of the East African Legislative Assembly in Kigali to highlight new areas of focus and budget implications for implementing the Monetary Union.

The Speaker of EALA, Margaret Nantongo Zziwa, said this is because the Heads of State affirmed, at a previous meeting in Nairobi, indicating that that on November 30, 2013, they would be ready to sign the Monetary Union Protocol.

The Speaker is currently presiding over the ongoing Fifth Meeting of the First Session of the Third Assembly in Kigali that ends on Friday.

“He [President Museveni] is coming in on Wednesday [today]. I am yet to know exactly what he is going to tell us, but in his statement, he is likely to indicate to us some of the indications, or some of the areas where they wish the EAC to focus on,” Zziwa said.

Last year, she said, during the summit in Nairobi they [EAC Heads of State] held an infrastructure and investment retreat which in itself had an impetus on the sector of infrastructure, and they made specific commitments on what they should do.

The speech is also expected to focus on budget since the partner states are supposed to present their budgets in June for the next fiscal year.

Zziwa said, within this budget, the Assembly also envisages seeing the financial requirements which will help the institutions of EAC to prepare the monetary union protocol.

“These are some of the things that we imagine will be carried in the State of the EAC Address to be delivered by the Chairman of the Summit,” the Speaker said.

The Monetary Union is the third stage, after the Customs Union and the Common Market, in the EAC integration process. The bloc ultimately aspires to become a Political Federation.

The Monetary Union, also known as currency union, is where two or more states share the same currency, without necessarily having any further integration.

If successful, a monetary union will involve, among others, the use of a single currency. It will do away with currency exchange charge and positively impact on the cost of doing business, among other advantages.