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Cape Town - Negotiations on two of the three phases of the
proposed African Grand Free Trade Area must be completed within 36 months,
counting from the day of the agreement, Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies
said on Monday.
Leaders from the Common Market for East and Southern Africa
(Comesa), East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development
Community (Sadc) met on Sunday in Johannesburg for the second summit to
formally launch the tripartite free trade area negotiations.
At a press briefing on Monday, Davies said the first phase of the agreement would be to address tariff barriers between the three regional
economic communities.
"The heads of state agreed that free trade agreements
had already been reached within their respective regional economic communities
and while they had thought an inordinate amount of time was needed to do this,
they still allocated 36 months to do so from Sunday, June 12," he said.
The second phase of the agreement, which Davies said would
run concurrently with the first, had the same timeframe as the first. This
related to easing the movement of legitimate businesspeople.
"I know the movement of people is always a sensitive
issue. But we know there are people with nefarious agendas trying to get into
SA but even so, we need to take the movement of legitimate businesspeople
easier," he said.
The final phase related to trade support and this would deal with issues such as intellectual property protection and competition. This phase had no timeframe allocated to it, Davies said.
