Southern African Development Community (SADC) chief executive Prega Ramsamy on Tuesday renewed calls for the regional organisation to speed up the implementation of a free trade area and assimilate it into a customs union.
”We are now saying the time-frame for the implementation of a free-trade area should be revisited, in the light of what is happening in Africa and the world at large,” Ramsamy said in the Botswanan capital.
”The United States is talking about a free trade agreement with SACU (Southern African Customs Union) countries, and this could marginalise the SADC,” he said.
SACU member states are Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland. The countries also belong to the 14 member-state SADC. The SADC moved to the implementation of a free-trade area in September 2000 and set itself a target date of 2012 to have brought the tariff level in all goods and service to zero.
Said Ramsamy: ”We are going to have a review meeting in 2004 where we are going to look at the possibility of shortening the time frame of implementation of the free trade area without jeopardising its fundamentals.”
”We want to see how we can bring all tariffs to zero by 2008 instead of 2012,” he said, adding that ”we should take opportunities which are presenting themselves in this globalization process. The region should dismantle the internal barriers which are there at the moment.”
Ramsamy said SADC countries stand to benefit from US markets. ”The region would benefit through employment creation, infrastructure development which will lead to high living standards. We cannot continue with this slow pace of development,” he warned.
Apart from the SACU countries, SADC member states are: Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. – Sapa-AFP