Special-Report_Doing-Business-in-Uganda-East-Africa-and-Beyond_East-African-Business-Week_Trade-Report Mar. 2015 | Page 8

viii

SPECIAL REPORT
East African Business Week I February 23 - March 1, 2015

MINISTRY OF TRADE, INDUSTRY AND COOPERATIVES

Doing Business in Uganda, East Africa & beyond
East African Business Week I February 23 - March 1, 2015

Communications
key in trade deals
„ Kampala, Uganda –The penetration of telecom services in Uganda and East Africa
as a whole, has been central in enabling business and trade to flourish within the
region.
However the cost of making regional calls has been a concern. For some time now
business people have been calling for a reduction of tariffs to complement with the integration agenda of the East African Community.
This bottleneck moved an inch closer to being solved when regional Presidents at the
5th Heads of State Summit for the Northern Corridor Integration Project held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 2nd May, 2014 and the 6th Heads of State Summit held in Kigali, on 3rd July, 2014
urged the speedy implementation of the One-Network-Area (ONA) before January 2015.
This means calls within the region are exempted from surcharges applied on international incoming calls, removal of additional charges to subscribers on account of roaming and removal of charges for receiving calls.
The one network Area enables subscribers travelling within region to be charged as
local subscribers in the visited country network and operators within the region were
required to re-negoiate their bilateral agreements to ensure full implementation of the
One Network Area.
The implementation of ONA will play a part in enhancing regional socio-economic
integration, fast-track the regional common market, reduce cost of doing business for
all members, spur other economic activities such as trade and services and increased
government revenues from increased usage of ICT services.
The coming of ONA which has been implemented in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and South
Sudan has made it possible for phone users to communicate cheaply leading to increased calls traffic unlike in the past when taxes forced operators to charge high tariffs.
Th R