Here is some of our work in this sphere:
We supported the Laos Ministry of Industry & Commerce and all the relevant domestic ministries and nascent professional regulators to ensure Laos’s compliance with its ASEAN commitments for developing mutual recognition agreements for professional qualifications. In doing so, we also set out how the seven professions involved (doctors, dentists, nurses, accountants, architects, engineers, and surveyors) could be developed to meet the country’s own domestic interests and what regulatory infrastructure would be needed.
When the Seychelles joined the WTO in 2015, it committed to opening its market to foreign professional service providers. But since there was little regulation of these services in the country, the government was struggling to understand how it could honour its obligations, ensure clients could access the services they needed whilst also developing opportunities for the embryonic local professions. We helped the government to understand the existing regulatory models for architects, engineers, accountants, and quantity surveyors and set out a new recommended model which would combine the registration and administrative tasks common to all the professions into a single Authority for the Licensed Professions.
The East African Community aims to create a single market for qualified professionals across the region. Over a series of projects since 2013, we have supported this process. We have advised the EAC Secretariat on the legal instrument for implementing Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs). We have worked with the competent authorities for East African engineers, accountants, and architects to retool their existing agreements to fit the EAC model and trained their boards and key staff members in complying with the obligations that flow from these agreements. We continue to provide expert advice on the proposed draft MRA for East African Advocates as well as training for lawyers on the EAC single market in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.
