BUJUMBURA, July 14(Xinhua) -- Visiting Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto Wednesday met with Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza and discussed security as well as business in the East African region, Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto said after meeting the Burundian president.
"We discussed peace and security in the East African region. We discussed the situation in South Sudan which is a concern on the Africa continent and in our region specifically," said Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto.
According to Ruto, the other issue discussed was trade and investment in East Africa.
Ruto said, "We discussed the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) with the European Union (EU) that we are soon concluding."
He added that those agreements will open up the market in East Africa and in Europe.
"There are benefits for our engagements as a bloc instead of as individual countries. As a bloc, we help carry each other and we make less possible for any of our EAC countries to be isolated or penalized individually," said Ruto.
He stressed that other trading blocs will respect the EAC bloc if member states stand together as they will be able to negotiate better.
"If we are negotiating as 150 million people of the EAC bloc, we will be stronger than individual countries," said Ruto.
In 2007, EAC countries namely Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda agreed to sign the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) with the European Union (EU) and in 2014, negotiations were concluded and all the five EAC countries accepted to put their final signature on the EPA.
