Abstract

The East Africa Community (EAC) was established with the aim of widening and deepening cooperation among the EAC Partner States and other regional economic communities in, among others, political, economic and social fields for their mutual benefit. One of the ways of reaping the economic and social benefits was through the establishment of One Stop Border Posts (OSBPs) as a trade facilitation tool applied at the borders, which promotes a coordinated and integrated approach to facilitate trade, the movement of people and improvement in security. The objective of this study was to establish the economic impact of OSBPs to the EAC. The study found a positive impact of OSBPs on revenue and trade facilitation. On the revenue frontier, the revenue trend line clearly indicates the revenue collected before and after establishment of OSBPs.  Additionally, the study indicates the positive impact of OSBPs on trade facilitation through improvement of border crossing speed and efficiency thus a reduction on trade barriers and increase in trade volumes. It was also observed that there has been an increase in cross-border security which has led to a reduction in revenue leakages as well as better resource utilization through improved cross border cooperation and sharing of resources and intelligence. In light of these findings, the study recommends implementation of OSBPs to the other border points geared towards trade facilitation and revenue increase.


Keywords: One Stop Border Post (OSBP); Single Customs Territory; Customs Union