The EAC-COMESA-SADC Tripartite Trade Negotiations Forum (TTNF) concludes its one of the many rounds in Entebbe Uganda, today 8th October 2013. The TTNF is a forum of experts and senior officials of the on going negotiations for establishing an EAC-COMESA-SADC Tripartite FTA.
Negotiations under this Entebbe round covered SPS and TBT, trade remedies and dispute settlement, tariff liberalization and rules of origin. The TTNF meeting made progress on a number of other areas save for tariff liberalization where a number of countries were not ready with the offers. Only EAC, SACCU, Egypt and Mauritius had their tariff liberalization offers ready. However, the others were not ready and this curtailed progress on exchange of offers. Hon Amelia Kyambadde the Minister of Trade Industry and Cooperative of the Republic of Uganda who officiated the meeting emphasized the need for the Member States to finalize negotiations in time before end of April 2014 as per the Tripartite road. The Hon Minister called on Member States to finalize their offers in order to allow negotiations to start and conclude in time.
Regarding the rules of origin, COMESA and EAC maintained their stand on having a Tripartite regime whose thresholds cover products in a general manner. SACCU insists on the rules of origin which are product specific. This seems to be a thorny issues that will derail the progress under this component of the EAC-COMESA-SADCTripartite FTA negotiations. SACCU also made a number of reservations on certain areas the negotiations under the Trade remedies and called for further consultations.
In general, the Entebbe EAC-COMESA-SADCTripartite FTA negotiations made progress but the call for extended country consultations mainly by SACCU countries spearheaded by South Africa will undoubtedly delay the process.
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