Sunday, January 05, 2014

Africa Inches Closer to Continental Free Trade Area

Africa inches closer to continental FTA

January 6, 2014

Leaders of Africa’s top trading blocs have agreed on free trade rules, taking the longstanding search for a single continental market closer to reality. About 100 trade and Customs experts from the 26 countries under Comesa, EAC and Sadc, who met in Mauritius recently, agreed on the general rules to apply on the free trade area (FTA) that brings the three blocs together.

The agreements cover continental FTA rules of origin, a programme for eliminating barriers to trade (both technical and non-tariff), and a dispute settlement mechanism.

The agreements constitute a critical step in the campaign to merge the three blocs into a single market of one billion people that member states have been pushing for the past five years.

“Following (the Mauritius) discussions, member states are now engaged in negotiating the draft Tripartite FTA text as well as its Annexes,” the EAC Secretariat said in a statement.

Among its salient features, the EAC-Comesa-Sadc free trade area will permit unfettered exchange of some 6 000 products depending on level of processing, type of ownership as well as operation of vessels and factory ships.

While the team is yet to make the list of products public, it said the majority of them will be aligned to the existing rules of the three trading blocs with a few others being subjected to “specific rules to each product”.

“The objective of the Tripartite FTA is to achieve a larger market with a single economic space that will make it more attractive to investment and large-scale production,” the statement added.

In Kenya, for which the African continent has become the single-largest export market, the campaign to merge the three blocs comes as a boost to President Uhuru Kenyatta’s team, which has been campaigning for deeper ties with African countries.

President Kenyatta — who currently chairs EAC Heads of State Summit — has pledged to enforce double tax treaties and invest in inter-state infrastructure to improve trade with partners on the continent.

“Strong partnership and co-operation between African countries will bolster trade and investment, consequently improving the living standards of people,” President Kenyatta said in an earlier statement.

A single continental market will end the current problem of overlapping membership that has been blamed for holding back efforts to implement regional deals.

– The East African.

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