In general, the benefits of establishing trading blocs are to remove trade and investment barriers within trade blocs. It will also increase interdependency of neighboring countries on one another; encouraging trade within two countries or more.
COMESA, which abbreviates Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, offers very extensive benefits and advantages for its member States as well as the business community. Because of its focus on full private sector participation in integration, COMESA offers new opportunities for industrial, production, investment, development and trade opportunities not available under the previous regional arrangements.
No investor can decide to produce any goods without determining where and how to sell them. Therefore, the first advantage which COMESA offers to governments, investors and producers is the very large market. The national markets will be integrated into one large single "domestic market" to support new and expanded production and manufacturing. This is perhaps the largest single market in the developed world, aside from South East Asia. COMESA, with South Africa, has an estimated population of over 360 million people
Under COMESA, the business community is offered greater chances to make more high quality goods available to consumers at prices the people can afford. Eastern and Southern Africa comprises largely of nations which produce what they do not consume and consume what they do not produce. However, this will change under COMESA. Industrial development, production efficiency and competitive-ness will reverse this by transforming the production structures to the "age of mass consumption". The level of development in the manufacturing sector, which varies considerably among individual countries, will be exploited to promote more intra-COMESA