Common market for Africa aired

TRADE and Industry Minister Rob Davies is in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for talks aimed at creating a “one trade regime” that would forge a common market spanning the African continent.

The Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) is to be launched at the resort on Wednesday.

The deal between the East African Community, Southern African Development Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa would create a 26-country market, with a population of 625-million and GDP worth more than $1-trillion.

SENIOR officials of three African economic blocs met in Egypt yesterday to start hammering out details of a free trade agreement that could develop a common market spanning the continent.

The Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) is to be launched at a summit of heads of state and government on Wednesday in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm elSheikh, aimed at establishing a common framework for tariff preferences along with other commitments. The deal between the East African Community, Southern African Development Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) will create a market of 26 countries with a population of 625-million and gross domestic product (GDP) worth more than $1-trillion.

Yesterday senior officials from the three economic blocs began discussing the details of the deal.

“Today, we opened the preparatory meeting of senior officials. Details of our discussions will be presented tomorrow (Monday) at the meeting of ministers,” Francis Mangeni, director for trade at Comesa told AFP on the sidelines of the meeting.

The much-awaited TFTA has been widely welcomed by world business leaders, with experts high- lighting the fact that just 12% of African countries’ total trade is with each other.

Africa’s share of global trade stands at about 3%.

The 26 members from the three blocs range from relatively developed economies such as SA and Egypt to countries including Angola, Ethiopia and Mozambique, which are seen as having huge growth potential.

Analysts say that although the continent’s growth outstripped GDP product expansion by nearly three percentage points over the past 15 years, it faced falling commodity prices, power shortages, political instability and corruption.