31 Jul 2014

Minister of Trade and Industry, Ms Dorcas Makgato-Malesu says the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union (EU) and SADC has been concluded.

Briefing the media on July 30, Ms Makgato-Malesu said agreement will ensure that there will be no interruption of trade and market access for SADC exports to the EU market until the agreement is in force.

She said the SADC EPA group consists of seven SADC member states out of 15 and it is constituted by the five Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) being Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho and South Africa plus Mozambique and Angola.


The minister said Botswana is the coordinator of the SADC EPA Group at ministerial level while the permanent secretary in her ministry is the lead negotiator for the senior officials in their engagement with EU.

She said Botswana exports will be able to access the EU market duty free quota free meaning that market forces permitting, the country can export as much of its produce to the EU market as it could both industrial and agricultural goods.

The Minister said the other benefit is that the agreement EPA has managed to preserve the common external tariff (CET) which binds the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) together as all member states have initiated the agreement and will, in all likelihood, proceed to sign and ratify it.

Ms Makgato-Malesu said the EPA has a very flexible rules of origin which will facilitate intra-regional trade and industrialisation across Africa as they allow Botswana to cumulate with the rest of Africa and the other benefit is that the country have also managed to negotiate very flexible terms for export taxes and this was one of the long standing sticky unresolved issues preventing conclusion of the EPA.

She said they also managed to get agreement from the EU that they will eliminate export subsidies on agricultural goods destined for the SACU market and they also managed to restore a safeguard safety-net for Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland sensitive products which had previously been liberalised and reduced to zero tariffs under the Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement between South Africa and EU which the BLNS were de facto implementing in SACU.

She said it is anticipated that all these processes will take approximately six months for the Botswana and between 8 and 12 months for those with the most tedious processes within the group.

For his part, the EU Ambassador, Mr Gerard McGovern said the agreement has been carefully negotiated to uphold four important principles; taking into account level of development, asymmetry, foster regional integration and moving away from unilateral preferences and into relationship where trade between the parties is governed by a joint and bilateral agreement.

He said the agreement is a win-win situation and said firstly they consolidate the concessions Botswana already gives the EU today and in addition there is some new market access in wheat, barley, butter, some meat products like offals and cheese.

Mr McGovern said the main gain for the EU is the strategic considerations to consolidate the relationship with this region, . Ends