17 May 2018

The tripartite free trade area agreement entered into by the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), East African Community (EAC) and SADC carries a great potential to change the trade landscape of its 26 member countries.

At a high level consultation and national workshop held on Wednesday, acting director of the Department of International Trade at the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry, Ms Lesedi Kgotlele underscored the importance of ensuring that the objectives of the tripartite free trade area between the three regional economic blocs were realised

Ms Kgotlele said such a move would serve to boost trade in the member countries, thereby adding on to the efforts towards economic growth and development.

She said the effectiveness of the free trade area, which came into being in 2011, would also enhance competitiveness in terms of trade among and within the members.

She noted therefore that due to the immense benefits that member countries stood to reap from the COMESA-EAC-SADC tripartite free trade area, it was critical that consultations be held regularly to keep stakeholders abreast with the progress being made in the efforts to achieve the objectives of the agreement between the three regional blocs.

Ms Kgotlele also rallied the private sector in all member countries to pull their weight as they had a critical role to play for the success of the free trade area agreement.

A member of the tripartite free trade area secretariat, Dr Seth Gor from the COMESA bloc expressed gladness at the imminent increase in the number of member countries in the free trade area, explaining that Tunisia was expected to soon add on to the 26 members.

Turning to the intentions of the tripartite agreement, Dr Gor said some of its objectives were to achieve market integration, industrial as well as infrastructure development.

He explained that one component of the pillar of market integration promoted and facilitated the participation of the private sector in the free trade area.

Dr Gor pointed out that some progress had been made in the last three years in this area as the private sector had been training small scale traders and then linking them with big buyers within the tripartite bloc.

He said the progress had been recorded in 10 of the 26 current member countries.

Dr Gor said another component of the pillar was to undertake border assessments with the view to identifying the challenges that small scale traders encountered when trying to cross borders with their trade goods.

He said such challenges often came about as a result of failure by small traders to meet sanitary and phyto-sanitary requirements, saying part of the solution included training the traders to enhance their compliance with the requirements.

He further added that one other component that the pillar of market integration dealt with was that of facilitating trade through the removal of whatever barrier that could impede it.

EAC’s Mr Geoffrey Osoro, also a member of the secretariat, addressed the issue of overlapping of memberships to different blocs and groupings, a situation he said could create such challenges as high costs to governments due to having to pay several subscriptions.

He said the many memberships also often resulted in duplication of efforts and impediments resulting from contradictory policies of blocs and groupings.

Regarding the implications to Botswana that could come about as a result of its membership to the tripartite free trade area, Dr Gor said it was necessary to provide budgetary resources and address capacity constraints if the agreement was to be achieved.

He said there was also need for sensitisation and awareness creation to reach out to all stakeholders as well as to enhance the implementation of cross-border agreements for small traders. ENDS