To sustain momentum after the AfCFTA's January launch, traders must be kept in the loop about why implementation is slow.
A year ago, South African President
Yet almost 12 months later, apparently not a single widget has crossed an African border under the agreement's duty and quota free terms, and it's not clear when one will. Why the delay and is it a problem?
Wamkele Mene, the South African Secretary-General of AfCFTA, would say no. He's on record saying that all free trade areas take a long time to implement, and this is a particularly ambitious one.
Last week,
Meanwhile
Super-imposing the AfCFTA on other free trade areas will create additional complexity for dealers
Another measure is a digital platform that would provide information on all the rules of origin and the customs terms and procedures. This would especially help small and medium enterprises - the main aim of the AfCFTA, he said.
So why haven't they? In a blog on the TradeExperettes website, Catherine Grant Makokera, Head of
This isn't unique to the AfCFTA but is particularly acute here because relatively few specifics were included in the framework agreement (probably because of the rush to get it done, one would think). So in the current negotiations between countries, they have to start by identifying the 3% of goods that they exclude from AfCFTA tariff reductions before making their tariff offers on the rest.
A lot of painful reconfiguration is going on to reconcile free trade ideals with national industrial policies
'In those African countries that rely on tariff revenue as a key part of domestic resource mobilisation or that use tariffs as a tool of industrial policy, this could involve some difficult choices - a situation that is further complicated by an increasing focus on local content requirements and import substitution by African policymakers,' she says.
Indeed one hears that for several countries with significant industrial bases - like
Grant Makokera also says the concession that least developed countries (LDCs) will have longer (10-13 years) to implement tariff reductions is being eroded by more developed states' claiming the same preference via their membership of customs unions, which include LDCs.
She also notes that the AfCFTA won't replace existing regional free trade areas but will complement them, so that countries need only resort to it where they don't already have free trade. But super-imposing the AfCFTA on the other free trade areas will create additional complexity for dealers who will have to navigate a complex mix of rules and duties.
Overall Grant Makokera notes another tension between the political ambition to get the AfCFTA up and running as soon as possible and the technical process of negotiating complex rules. Negotiators, she fears, could cut corners to meet - or perhaps not too badly exceed - political deadlines. These cut corners could hamper smooth implementation.
Limited progress in negotiations does not in any way cast doubt on the viability of AfCFTA
And she notes that political leaders announcing the start of trading on
Teniola Tayo, a Researcher with the
And
'The road to the AfCFTA is a long one and the
Complex trade negotiations no doubt take time. But by firing the starting gun almost a year ago when no runners were out of the starting blocks, African leaders have created confusion, especially among traders.
Maybe the early start date was needed to drive negotiations. But to sustain momentum, the AfCFTA secretariat and participating states should do a better job of keeping traders in the loop about why implementation is taking so long.
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