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East African think tank urges regional infrastructure collaboration towards mutual growth

Xinhua, February 28, 2015 Adjust font size:

An East African think tank has emphasized on infrastructure collaboration among countries in the sub-region towards mutual growth and regional integration.

According to the Horn Economic and Social Policy Institute (HESPI), collaboration among the countries on infrastructure including, roads, irrigation facilities, power grids, energy sources, communication and network lines, as well as other areas, could have created an incentive for countries to pursue mutually beneficial political and economic ties and lock-in their gains.

At a policy forum on infrastructure collaboration Friday in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, Ali Abdi, HESPI managing director, told reporters that the countries in the sub-region should collaborate on infrastructure to address development constraints, especially the energy deficit.

"We have to do that in energy side; we have to do that in the transportation side; we have to do that in the telecommunication side, to have a kind of linkage to address the constraints of development," said the managing director.

The regional integration brings the countries together to do better in the areas of economic growth and other social sectors such as health and education as well as to compete in the world, he said.

Haile Kebret, HESPI research director, told reporters that a study by his organization has found that infrastructure collaboration has a huge potential for countries for mutual growth.

"What we have found is that infrastructure collaboration has a huge potential for countries for mutual growth, more specifically the Sudanese economy would grow by about 0.253 percentage points for every percentage increase in energy consumption in the short- run, but we take that in the long-run it would come to about 3 percentage points; that is huge," he said.

He said the same thing is for Kenya. The country in the short- run, for every percentage increase in energy consumption, it would grow by about 0.7 percentage points in economy. But in the long- run it would grow about 3.6 percentage points. Endi