On Sunday, heads of state and government from Africa’s three main regional blocs – the Southern African Development Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the East African Community – will meet in South Africa to launch negotiations for a Tripartite Free Trade Area (T-FTA).
Before mid-year South Africa would host the next summit on the establishment of a Trilateral Free Trade Agreement (T-FTA) among the regional economic groupings of the East African Community (EAC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
South Africa is considering bilateral trade agreements with Japan, Turkey and New Zealand, but a preferential trade agreement with India, currently under negotiation, is enjoying priority, said Brendan Vickers, a chief director at the department of trade and industry.
Negotiations for a tripartite free trade area (FTA), which would include 26 East and Southern African member states, were expected to begin by mid-year, Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said on Tuesday.
South Africa is pushing ahead to secure a free trade agreement between the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for East African States (Comesa).
The government has thrown its weight behind the South African sugar industry’s demand for preferential access to European markets. If granted, this would put SA on an equal sugar-trade footing with other sugar producing developing economies — the African-Pacific-Caribbean countries and the world’s least developed countries — for the first time since the industry lost its access under apartheid.
South Africa is likely to conclude an economic partnership agreement by the end of this year with the European Union as a member of the Southern African Customs Union, International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said yesterday.
South Africa’s black business people are battling to benefit from the numerous bilateral agreements the country has entered into, National Empowerment Fund CEO Philisiwe Buthulezi said on Thursday
President Jacob Zuma said on Monday in opening the India Show that SA would be deepening strategic partnerships with India, especially in the areas of science and technology, agriculture, human resource development and security.
India today said it will explore opportunities for a comprehensive market opening trade pact with South Africa as the two nations are likely to touch the $10 billion bilateral commerce this year.
South African President Jacob Zuma will lead a State visit to China this week in a bid to strengthen political, economic and trade relations with the world’s second-largest economy and South Africa’s largest trading partner.
An international arbitration tribunal in The Hague has dismissed an objection by Italian investors claiming that SA’s black economic empowerment requirements represented expropriation and violated the country’s bilateral investment treaties with Italy and the Belgo-Luxembourg Economic Union.
SA will not pursue a conventional free-trade agreement with China as this is not in the interests of the country, Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies says.
Parliament’s trade and industry committee wants South African MPs to play a greater role in negotiating international agreements and has urged that the legislative framework and rules for dealing with them be reviewed.
Speaking at the 100th anniversary of the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) celebration held in Namibia on Thursday, President Jacob Zuma said that the future of the customs union was "undoubtedly in question", if it could not "pursue the unfinished business of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations as a united group".
President Jacob Zuma and the Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou-Nguesso signed a bilateral trade agreement in Pretoria on Thursday. In a statement released after their meeting, Zuma welcomed the long-term land lease agreement of over 200000 hectares of idle farmland to a consortium of South African farmers.
SA is likely to focus on stimulating targeted sectors of the economy and firming up trade relations with key partners in Africa, Europe and the east this year, as growing global trade flows are expected to reflect a world emerging from recession.
The conclusion of a fisheries agreement between SA and the European Union has had to take second place to other considerations, even though SA’s fish exports to the EU are attracting duties that some other countries’ are not.
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