Negotiations between EAC, EPA on track despite hitches
Tanzania Daily News, Dar Es Salaam
Negotiations Between EAC, EPA On Track Despite Hitches
By Sebastian Mrindoko
26 August 2012
East Africa Community (EAC) General Secretary, Dr Richard Sezibera said despite progress made in the ongoing negotiations in the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union, there were still contentious issues to be addressed.
Dr Sezibera told a press conference after meeting the private sector CEOs in Dar es Salaam that it is the first ever opportunity since independence of EAC member states to sit together with the former colonisers to discuss terms of trade in the EPA.
"Instead of being seen as a total threat to EAC development, EPA should be grasped as an opportunity and instrument of negotiations with Europe on how to trade in a win win situation," remarked Dr Sezibera.
He said some of the key issues, which have arisen again and again in the negotiations, were how the EPA would lead to the development of the EAC member states and a strong integration. He added that by the end of the year, a new luminous development would be reached in the negotiations.
One of the contentious issues that caused hesitation of EAC states in signing the EPA was that two thirds of European products EPA wants to be duty-free will deny them revenue and ruin their domestic industries.
Accordingly, the interim EPA’s market opening commitments, which EAC initiated in 2007 were signed and implemented, and would see the region as collective liberalising 82.6 per cent of the value of imports from the EU. For Tanzania alone, the figure is higher to approximately 90 per cent of the value of imports from EU to be committed to duty free.
Of the 90 per cent facing tariff elimination, 23 per cent of the value of imports from the EU already enters the country duty free. The Confederation of Tanzania Industry (CTI) Chairman, Mr Felix Mosha, said there was no need to hurry the signing before the deal of first defining the EAC economic status including the benefits and losses which will arise.
He said private sector stakeholders support the position expressed by former president Benjamin Mkapa that EAC has to diversify and develop more of its own industries, grow agriculture sector and build capacities in the different services sectors.
Speaking during the private sector day early this month, Mr Mkapa, who likened EPA as a poison chalice and a second scramble for Africa that ought to be rejected, said with the agreement, Tanzania does not get anything other than being EU market and cheap sources of raw materials. He insisted that Africa needs to fast track regionalism by developing common markets now not tomorrow, create ideas on funding regional transportation infrastructure.
