APA-Lusaka (Zambia) Ministers from three of Africa’s main regional economic blocs have adopted several legal instruments governing trade among their member states as they edge closer to realisation of their cherished dream of operationalising a free trade area covering the eastern and southern parts of the continent.
In a statement late Wednesday, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) said the Council of Ministers of the COMESA-East African Community (EAC)-Southern African Development Community (SADC) grouping adopted legal instruments to implement the Tripartite Free Trade Agreement (TFTA) once it enters into force.
“In its 5th meeting conducted virtually today, the ministers adopted the instruments relating to trade and customs, namely the tripartite agreement on movement of businesspersons, annexes on elimination of import duties, trade remedies, rules of origin, dispute settlement mechanism and the TFTA protocol on competition policy,” said COMESA, which currently chairs the tripartite.
It added that the Council adopted the guidelines, manuals and working procedures developed on rules of origin and technical barriers to trade, which comprise of sanitary and phytosanitary matters and non-tariff barriers.
The other set of instruments adopted by the Council relates to road transport. These include the Vehicle Load Management Agreement, Multilateral Cross Border Road Transport Agreement, Vehicle Load Management Model Law, Cross Border Road Transport Model Law, Road Traffic Model Law, Road Traffic and Transport Transgression Model Law, and the Transportation of Dangerous Goods by Road Model Law.
According to COMESA, in adopting the road transport instruments, the Council applied the principle of variable geometry “which allows Member States that are not ready to apply them, to do so when ready.”
“This will provide room for discussions to continue at bilateral level while at the same time allowing those countries that are ready, to proceed with their implementation.”
With the adoption of these trade and transport facilitation instruments, focus now is on the ratification of the TFTA, which is currently short of three member-state signatures to achieve the requisite 14 ratifications to enable it to enter into force.
Currently, 22 tripartite member states have signed the agreement, out of which 11 – Botswana, Burundi, Egypt, Eswatini, Kenya, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe – have ratified it.
The TFTA was adopted in 2015 and brings together 29 countries that plan to create a single market for the COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite region.
Members of the Tripartite represent over 50 percent of the African Union membership, contribute more than 60 percent of continental gross domestic product and have a combined population of over 800 million.
Other members of the COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite are Angola, Central Africa Republic, Comoros, Djibouti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Tanzania.
JN/APA