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Business Reporter
THE Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) and the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) council of ministers will meet this month for their bi-annual task force meeting.

The purpose of the ESAAMLG is to combat money laundering by implementing the financial action task force recommendations.

This effort includes co-ordinating with other international organisations concerned with combating money laundering and developing institutional and human resource capacities to deal with these issues, and co-ordinating technical assistance.

“The 32nd task force meeting of the senior officials will be held from August 28, 2016 to September 1, 2016 in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe,” organisers said.

“The task force meeting will be followed by the council of ministers’ meeting on September 2, 2016 and the public/private sector adialogue, which will start from September 2 to 3, 2016. The venue for the meetings will be Elephant Hills Resort Hotel.”

The Sadc council of ministers, which is part of the regional bloc’s extraordinary summit of heads of State and government oversees the functioning and development of Sadc and ensures that policies are properly implemented.

It consists of ministers from each member state, usually from the ministries of foreign affairs, economic planning, or finance. It meets twice a year in January or February and immediately prior to the extraordinary summit on industrialisation in August or September.

Following the August 2014 summit, a regional ministerial task force was set up and it met in February this year to consider the strategy and road map for industrialisation in Sadc.

The industrialisation summit seeks to evaluate how Sadc is progressing on its mandate of economic development to improve livelihoods in a peaceful, sustainable and stable region.

Member states of ESAAMLG are Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho and Malawi. Other members are Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Seychelles, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

@BiancaMlilo