Steeper VAT takes effect today

MBONGENI MGUNI
Staff Writer | Thursday April 1, 2010 00:00

 

Botswana will attend the meeting in its capacity as the SADC EPA Group Chairperson. The meeting will mark yet another attempt to iron out glitches in EPA negotiations that saw a regional split last year when Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland and Mozambique signed an interim EPA (iEPA) while South Africa, Namibia and Angola opted out.

Negotiations between the EU and the countries that opted out and regional trade tensions caused by the split were placed on the backburner by the global recession of 2009. On Tuesday, the Head of the EU delegation to Botswana, Ambassador Paul Malin, told Mmegi that after a lull in negotiations and discussions of the EPA, its main actors were once again due in Brussels. 'There's been something of a pause,' Malin said. 'There have been a lot of changes politically in Europe.  'We are on our third Commissioner in the space of a few months, but now we have the political backing to move forward. The region has also said it would like to move forward with the discussions and we will have a meeting of senior officials in Brussels to look at all the outstanding issues.' On the agenda of April's meeting will be discussions on the implementation of the iEPA by the countries that have signed it and harmonisation of key tariff issues.  Under the iEPA, the five countries enjoy duty and quota free access to the EU for all imports while they in turn will liberalise 86 percent of EU imports over four years ending in 2012; 2023 for Mozambique.

The delay in implementation of the iEPA and the lull in negotiations are expected to come before the April meeting. 'The expectation was that countries that signed the iEPA last June would notify the World Trade Organisation, begin implementation and at the same time discuss the larger or full EPA,' said Malin. 'There have been problems here.  'The signatories have not notified the WTO and they are not implementing the agreement as well. The EU is doing its bit, but the other signatories are not. I would hope that this meeting deals with many of the outstanding technical issues. We have solutions for many of the iEPA's challenges and we know that there are practical considerations in implementation (which) is proving tricky.'

Ministry of Trade and Industry officials were unavailable to comment on the April trip and agenda items to be discussed.

Negotiations between SADC and the European Union for a substantive EPA have been hampered by technicalities such as the existence of overlapping trading blocs to which some SADC members belong, the unique agreement between the EU and South Africa and the proposed full EPA which will cover not only trade in goods, but services and investment as well.