President Danny Faure’s Statement at the 20th COMESA Summit, Lusaka, 18th – 19th July 2018

Boosting the region’s maritime infrastructure and security

VICTORIA, Seychelles, July 30, 2018,-/African Media Agency (AMA)/- President Danny Faure has called for the Regional Economic Community to elevate its levels of engagement with regards to maritime infrastructure and maritime security. “Effecting real regional integration can be deemed a futile exercise, the longer we rely on third party shipping lines to transport goods between our countries, whilst we find ourselves in such close proximity and yet incur unnecessary delays as a result of these goods having to tranship in third parties before being landed in our countries. This has the adverse effect of rendering our goods uncompetitive”.

The President further added: “As COMESA, we can further increase our ability to achieve economic growth as we engage in our region’s maritime stability and our regional maritime infrastructure”. The challenges faced in these fields and the importance of the sustainable development of COMESA’s blue economy were also presented to the Summit, as these remain part and parcel of lifting barriers to trade and enhancing the ease of doing business.

Seychelles stressed on the importance of the creation of shipping routes and the establishment of shipping lines that would better develop the maritime environment in order to facilitate movement of goods between COMESA member states.

To achieve this objective, Seychelles announced the holding of the African Shipping Line Investment Forum in the first quarter of 2019 and called for continent-wide participation.

President Faure’s statement to the Summit was delivered in his absence by Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Barry Faure. Seychelles was represented by a seven-member strong delegation to the 20th COMESA Summit of the Authority of Heads of State.

Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Seychelles.