Lusaka- The planned launch of the Grand Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) by three African Regional Economic Communities earmarked for Egypt by the middle of this year may be delayed after it emerged that stakeholders involved in discussions have reached a deadlock on various phsytosanitary and other trade related issues mainly affecting land locked countries.

A report from by the Technical Working Group meeting held in Malawi recently reveals that the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA); Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community (EAC) have failed to agree on key trade related issues, which were raised at the meeting over the planned launch of the FTA which had been pushed to May this year from December last year.

Over the years, the three regional economic blocs have been making frantic efforts to have their 26-member states come together to form one common market commonly referred to as the Tripartite Free Trade Area. The enlarged FTA will create a wider market covering 26 countries in Eastern and Southern Africa, nearly half of the African Union membership, with a combined population of approximately 600 million people spanning from Cape to Cairo.

However, the Malawi meeting failed to agree on some key trade issues relating to phsytosanitary standards, which deal with dairy, fish products, rules of origin for various products, as well as other areas relating to imports mainly for landlocked countries such as Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The Working Technical Group’s report seen by The Southern Times confirms that representatives from COMESA, SADC and EAC failed to agree on key issues and this has prompted the convenors to call for two more meetings to seek finality on some of the areas of concern.

“As a result of wide disagreements by member states on various issues including phsytosanitary, the SADC-EAC-COMESA Secretariat will convene two more meetings in an attempt to reach an agreement to facilitate the launch of the largest free trade area in the African continent encompassing 26 countries from SADC, EAC and COMESA regions,” reads part of the report.

The African Union, which is pushing for an expeditious resolution to some of the concerns including simplified agriculture safeguard measures to protect the sector from imports from countries within the TFTA, has shown keen interest in ensuring that all the concerns relating to trade are resolved promptly to avoid further delays to the launch of the much espoused grand TFTA.

COMESA Secretary General Sindiso Ngwenya confirmed to The Southern Times that the meeting has been pushed to June rather than the end of May as earlier anticipated.

This was after the convenors shelved, yet again the same meeting which was planned for Egypt last December over disagreements, he said.

“Yes the meeting will be in June, the venue remains unchanged, but that’s all I can say,” he said without elaborating.

Recently, some trade proponents have been calling for a speedy implementation of the TFTA in Africa as the global market is yearning for more products from the continent while the regional economic groupings need to increase intra-trade among member countries.

“We cannot afford to delay the implementation of the tripartite FTA as well as accelerate regional integration because that is Africa’s dream and desire to break into the European market,” former Mauritius president Cassam Uteem remarked recently. Uteem stressed that the idea behind the tripartite FTA or regional integration in Africa was the desire of Pan African leaders who wanted Africa to grow at the same pace as Europe in terms of trade but that dream has been held back by delays.

Uteem was instrumental in the negotiations to form the tripartite FTA and spoke to The Southern Times in Zambia recently when he led the Election Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA) Observer Mission to the country’s January 20 presidential by-election.

He commended COMESA for its untiring efforts to push for the tripartite FTA for over 10 years and the desire to ensure the three regional groupings are joined, ostensibly to avoid “duplication of efforts”. COMESA embraced its own FTA in 2000. Some countries in the three regional economic groupings belong to more than one of the blocs. For example, Zambia and Zimbabwe belong to COMESA and SADC while Tanzania belongs to both the EAC and SADC.

The European Union (EU) Head of Mission to Zambia, Gilles Hervio, whose grouping of 28 member states has been instrumental in promoting regional integration and FTAs in Africa, argues that “Africa cannot afford to waste more time than is now”.

“We are and have been keen to see Africa become self-reliant in the growth of intra trade amongst member states while at the same time promoting trade between developing countries and Europe, but Africa seems to be dragging its feet, for reasons not known,” he said.

“There is an open market out there (Europe) looking for goods, products and services from Africa, but, it seems the process is being delayed unnecessarily.”

Although Europe had its own problems with regional integration which included failure to adhere to set rules, the organisation has managed to set benchmarks including making the Euro, the universal currency in most of the member countries.

“Europe had its own problems with regional integration, but at least we made headways in a number of areas, which Africa needs to emulate and foster such programmes,” Hervio says.

The establishment of a single and enlarged market is expected to boost intra-regional trade and deepen regional integration through improved investment flows and enhanced competition.

The tripartite FTA is expected to see Africa’s longstanding vision to be an integrated, prosperous and united continent realised.

The tripartite FTA is part of a broader continental FTA, which the African Union aims to establish, together with other regions of Africa as part of efforts to increase intra-regional trade within the continent.

However, critics have questioned the feasibility of such an arrangement.

But African leaders at the African Union Summit in January 2012 under the theme ‘boosting intra-African trade’, endorsed a plan to set up a Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) by 2017. The proposed CFTA would be a key component of the AU’s strategy to boost trade within the region by at least 25-30 percent in the next decade.

The “Declaration on boosting intra-African trade and the establishment of a continental free trade area” calls on member states, regional economic communities (RECs), and development partners to adopt the necessary measures toward the effective implementation of an Action Plan – a document produced during the AU trade ministers’ meeting in December 2011 detailing priority action clusters to address obstacles to increasing intra-African trade.

Intra-African trade currently stands at 12 percent of total trade, compared to 60 percent for Europe, 40 percent for North America, and 30 percent for ASEAN, according to statistics cited by the WTO.

Enhancing this trade – such as through a large continent-wide trade deal – and deepening market integration “can contribute significantly to sustainable economic growth, employment generation, poverty reduction, inflow of foreign direct investment, industrial development, and better integration of the continent into the global economy,” the AU declaration said.

Despite leaders’ endorsement of the declaration, however, several representatives from various regional groupings insisted that it was premature to think of establishing a CFTA by 2017, given that another plan to consolidate three existing free trade areas into a smaller, 26-nation “Tripartite FTA,” is still facing challenges of its own.

Source: The Southern Times

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