East African Community  (EAC) five member states have signed a protocol that will lay the groundwork for a single monetary union within the next 10 years, CCTV Africa reported.

Heads of state from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, who already have a common market protocol in place that ushered in a single customs union and eased trade across their boarders, are now seeking to harmonize their monetary and fiscal policies and create a common central bank.

With exception of Burundi, the other three EAC members already present their annual budgets at the same time in June every year. EAC’s combines gross domestic product is estimated at $85 billion.

The region with more than 135 million swahili speaking people, has in the recent years become a hot bed for oil and gas explorations, which has attracted huge amount of foreign direct investments from multinationals such as Tullow oil and Ophir Energy. These are expected to reduce east African countries dependency on aid in coming years.