By HELEN ZULU – THE Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) has expressed concern with the low level of intra-regional trade in the region which is currently below 10 per cent. COMESA secretary general Sindiso Ngwenya said intra-regional trade remained abysmally low below 10 per cent. Mr Ngwenya said transaction costs were also still very high and huge obstacles existed to the free movement of goods, capital, investments and people in form of non-tariff and technical barriers to trade. He said at the opening of the regional meeting to finalise the COMESA 2016-2020 Medium Term Strategic Plan in Lusaka on Tuesday that immigration laws and policies in many member states were still harsh and discriminatory. “The challenges towards attaining the seamless flow of goods, free movement of persons, capital and other objectives are still daunting. “Regrettably immigration laws and policies are still harsh and discriminatory, yet the free movement of business persons remains a recurrent theme in policy discourse for the desired goal as stated in the strategy for achieving the common market,” Mr Ngwenya said. He further said that most COMESA member states’ economies still relied on the production and exportation of a few primary products without any value addition. Mr Ngwenya said regional integration promoted the economic growth and industrialisation process through fostering intra-regional trade, infrastructure and investment. He said the need to transform the economies from an overreliance on primary commodities and low value added products would continue to drive COMESA’s planning and execution agenda. Mr Ngwenya said such pursuit must involve developing the necessary strengths and resilience, as well as the capacity to enhance competitiveness, innovation and growth through industrialisation and trade facilitation. He said the 2016-2020 Strategic Plan to be adopted by the council was expected to contribute to structural transformation of the economies of member states to foster economic development through trade facilitation and investment promotion. “This will do so by creating an enabling and conducive economic environment with focus on trade and facilitation, market integration, infrastructure development, industrialisation, institutional and regulatory policies, capacity development as well as resource mobilisation. “The speed step towards attaining regional integration agenda will come about when member states and non-state actors fulfil their roles and responsibilities,” he said.