East Africa: EPA signed to ’’protect’’ small farmers
Inter Press Service | 30 November 2007
TRADE-EAST AFRICA: EPA Signed to ’’Protect’’ Small Farmers
By Rosalia Omungo
DAR ES SALAAM, Nov 30 (IPS) — The East African Community signed a framework agreement as part of the economic partnership agreement (EPA) talks with the European Union (EU) to ensure continued access to EU markets for African small farmers, says Juma Mwapachu, secretary general of the East African regional body.
The East African Community (EAC) consists of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi - some of the poorest countries on the African continent. The framework agreement on trade in goods determines the reduction and eventual scrapping of tariffs on 81 percent of EU imports entering the EAC market. This will happen in phases.
‘‘We are made to play second fiddle because we are told the World Trade Organisation says ‘come January 1, 2008, no more preferential Cotonou agreement. Take it or leave it’.
‘‘In such a situation, how are we going to access the EU market if we don’t have an arrangement to replace the Cotonou agreement?’’ Mwapachu told a meeting of the Helsinki Process on globalization and democracy which ended yesterday in Tanzania.
He was making these statements against the background of civil society organizations arguing that the EU could have arranged for the extension of the waiver granted by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for the re-negotiation of trade arrangements between Europe and its former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP).
The conclusion of the EPA between the EAC and the EU was driven by the desire to ensure that African exporters continue to enjoy duty free and quota free market access into the EU and that they are not blocked from the market in January 2008, he said.
‘‘Why is trade how it is today? Because the rich world still wants us to play second fiddle. Whenever we come with firm proposals, they want us to be on the receiving end,’’ Mwapachu said.
In an interview with IPS, Mwapachu said the EU was ‘‘concerned’’ about the 25 year transitional period for the liberalization of African markets for EU imports which it had initially agreed to. The EU’s insistence on reducing the period to 15 years constituted a stumbling block in the negotiations over the past few weeks.
Mwapachu pointed to the importance of development aid to assist the East African states to create capacity for production and export in the face of the EU’s various non-tariff barriers, such as sanitary and phyto-sanitary rules.
‘‘We have infrastructure problems in Tanzania. There is little local production. The issue here is how we are going to be build capacity for our small farmers to be able to export and grow competitively. One really hopes that the EU will allow the development component in the EPA to help address supply-side constraints.’’
‘‘This is a very sad day for the future of the East African Community,’’ said Dr. Yash Tandon, executive director of the intergovernmental think tank South Centre in Geneva, with reference to the news that the EAC had signed the EPA.
The EAC should have bought time to think through the implications of the framework agreement on trade in goods which it had signed.
Tandon said Uganda and Tanzania are covered under the EU’s Everything But Arms (EBA) trade agreement, so they would not have suffered any loss of market access if they did not sign the framework agreement.
Kenya could have demanded the Generalized System of Preferences Plus from the EU, a preferential trade agreement which is available to a selected group of developing states, Tandon argued.
‘‘In my view they have been pressurized to sign this agreement which will have serious implications. We have had no time to analyse these implications.’’
