Earlier this year, SACU tendered for the development of an industrial policy framework, designed to ensure that the value generated in the union translates to a balanced industrial development of the five members. Ministers from Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, are due to attend a retreat soon where individual members' issues on a common industrial policy will be aired.
At its heart, the industrial policy carries the frustrations of SACU's smaller members for whom the union has essentially provided regional powerhouse, South Africa, with a duty and quota free market for its products, at the expense of other members' industrial development.Smaller members argue that SACU has almost singularly benefitted South African industry, with the external investors who are drawn in by the large market and incentives provided, almost exclusively opting to establish themselves in more developed South Africa.For Botswana, non-mining industrial exports have found little market space against powerful South African brands within the SACU region, essentially meaning the export of jobs to the regional powerhouse via imports.
