The federal government plans to spend over half a billion Birr on building a market centre on a vital crossing point to Kenya, hoping to facilitate cross-border trade. Construction work is scheduled to start next month, with an outlay of 560 million Br, erected in Moyale, a border town 780Km south of Addis Abeba.

The project is part of an initiative for cross-border trade, promoted by the Common Market for Eastern & Southern Africa (COMESA), with 95 million dollars in financing from the European Union (EU). COMESA, a trade bloc formed by 21 countries, initiated it two years ago. Ethiopia has been a founding member of COMESA since its inception in the early 1990s.

COMESA's Secretariat floated a tender at the end of last year, inviting firms for supervision works. According to Gebretsadik Tassew, director of multilateral trade relations and negotiations at the Ministry of Trade & Integration, evaluations are ongoing.

Two months ago, the Moyale town administration made 14,250sqm of land available for the project, disclosed Birhanu Gonna, head of the Moyale Mayor's Office.

Officials plan to accommodate close to 5,000 traders, primarily women, in the centre for no rental fees. The centre will feature a livestock quarantine centre, where animals will be held in isolation for a specified period before crossing the border.

Last month, officials from Ethiopia and Kenya negotiated to determine an agreed list of products to be traded along the border. The negotiations were held in the presence of Christopher Onyango (PhD), director of trade and customs at COMESA.

“Both countries reached an agreement on the list of products,” Gebremeskel Chala, minister of Trade & Regional Integration, told Parliament two weeks ago.

Ethiopia is a signatory of over a dozen bilateral and multilateral trading blocs. Despite over three decades of membership with COMESA, it has benefited the least among signatories. In 2020, Ethiopia traded close to 18 million dollars worth of goods through COMESA, representing less than one percent of export revenues. Khat is the primary commodity traded through COMESA.

Officials say the simplification and formalisation of cross-border trade is a crucial milestone for effectively implementing trade deals between the two countries. A one-stop border post in Moyale started operation last year after it was inaugurated in December 2020 in the presence of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) and Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Financed mainly by the African Development Bank (AfDB), this post is the first of its kind in Ethiopia. It is the fifth for Kenya, however.