OWN CORRESPONDENT, Gaborone | Tuesday 8.45am.
TRADE officials from the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting in Gaborone on Monday called for EU trade concessions to the region to be extended by another ten years.
“The member states seek a waiver from the WTO (World Trade Organisation) on the current trade arrangement to be continued for another 10 years,” SADC Chief Economist Chingu Mwila said. “But the EU says the trade preferences could only be continued for another five years,” he added.
“The main reason why the SADC member states want a 10-year waiver is that they still want to restructure their economies before any reciprocal arrangement could be entered into,” he said. The concessions were granted in terms of the Lome Convention’s provisions granted to African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, and are due to expire next year.
Mwila said “the fear is that regional industries across the board would not compete favourably with those from EU.” He said the recommendation will be taken to the ministerial meeting in Gaborone on Wednesday. It will also be presented to the WTO ministerial conference to be held in the US next year.
SADC trade officials, who conclude their two-day meeting on Tuesday, are also due to debate a free trade agreement between countries in the southern half of Africa.
Diplomatic sources at the weekend said member states were agreed on the main principles of trade liberalisation, but officials were yet to reach consensus on “finer details”. “What is remaining is the kind of percentage on items relating to persons and service,” a Zimbabwean diplomat said.
South African Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin last week told a regional meeting of the World Economic Forum that the talks were “well down the track.” Erwin said that some aspects of an agreement could be implemented by the beginning of 2000, but warned that the road ahead was fraught with difficulty, given the growing trade imbalances that exist between the 14 SADC states.