SACU
Institutional development is considered important in empowering the Southern African Customs Union’s (Sacu’s) secretariat to play a significant role in regional policy development and the associated policy-making structures.
A high-ranking government official has hinted that the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) may resume free trade talks with the US following the election of Democratic candidate Barack Obama to America’s high office. Trade and Industry Director-General, Tshediso Matona, says Obama’s election can result in a mutually beneficial trade term with the US.
Technical issues and demands by the EU such as the automatic extension to the EC of future trade benefits given to third countries, export taxes, the integrity of the common external tariff of Sacu, the movement of goods between members of the proposed free trade area and infant industry protection are Sacu’s major concerns.
The Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) council of ministers is gathering in Windhoek today for a meeting that is likely to be dominated by the acrimonious Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations with the European Union (EU).
Policy paralysis in the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) is compounding problems for the region’s struggling clothing and textiles industry.
The Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Duke Lefhoko, has urged manufacturers to widen their marketing scope beyond the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), given the impending new trade arrangements that Botswana is negotiating with other countries.
It will be critical in the coming months to mobilise resistance to the implementation of the Interim EPA in its current format and thereby strengthen the Namibian Government’s hand not to sign a final EPA with the EU. Namibia should also link up with African and international campaigns against EPAs, which have emerged in the past few years. The battle is not lost but there is little time left to prevent EPAs from becoming a new and powerful tool to promote EU interests at the expense of Africa’s development needs. A new publication from the Labour Resource and Research Institute (LaRRI).
Business chambers from southern Africa believe that talk of a single Southern African Development Community (SADC) Customs Union - that would replace the Southern African Customs Unions (SACU) and Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) - is premature until a SADC Free Trade Area (FTA) is fully in place.
The United States signed a pair of agreements on Wednesday to boost trade and investment ties with countries in southern and eastern Africa, the US Trade Representative’s office said.
Trade ministers from the United States and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) signed Wednesday their first Trade, Investment and Development Cooperation Agreement (TIDCA).
While acrimony persists over trade talks with the European Union (EU), the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) has had a breakthrough with bilateral negotiations with the Latin American trade bloc Mercosur.
Leaders of the South American trade bloc Mercosur meeting at a summit in Argentina have signed trade agreements with the Southern African Customs Union, as well as with Turkey and Jordan.
The Southern African Customs Union plans to sign an interim economic partnership agreement with the European Union next week. At the end of 2007, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland had all decided to initiate an Interim EPA with the EU, but South Africa had decided against. The union on Friday said all five of its members were now working together, and that the union intended to sign an interim EPA with the EU by July 1.
The executive secretary of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) Tswelelopele Moremi has said the organisation has achieved a lot since the establishment of its secretariat.
Trade and finance ministers of the five-nation Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) will meet in Botswana tomorrow to discuss deeper regional integration and challenges like the pending trade agreement with the European Union.
India is working on signing a Preferential Trade agreement (PTA) with South Africa Customs Union (SACU), a regional sub-group of African nations comprising South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland.
Sacu trade ministers meet in Gaborone with European Commission trade head Peter Mandelson tomorrow in a bid to break a stalemate over the economic partnership agreement the region is negotiating with the European Union. Mooted as an opportunity to harmonise the region’s trade arrangements with its biggest trading partner and deepen regional integration, the EPA has achieved the opposite. It has divided the region and is threatening to split it permanently.
The future of the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) hangs in the balance, even as engagement takes place at the highest political level to save the world’s oldest customs union from collapsing.
Korea is considering a free trade pact with the the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) to expand cooperative ties with resource-rich countries
