The Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Council of Ministers of Trade has agreed on Rules of Origin (RoO) for about 4,650 products to be traded in the continental market.
RoO are legal standards and criteria used to determine the national source of a product due to the fact that duties and restrictions in several cases depend on the source of imports.
If the RoO, covering about 88 per cent of all products on the tariff books across the continents, is approved by the Heads of States at the African Union upcoming summit, full-scale trading would commence in the market.
This was disclosed by the Chairman of the Council /South Africa’s Minister of Trade, Ephraim Patel, in Accra on Saturday at a press briefing on the Council’s eighth meeting held in Ghana on Friday and Saturday.
The meeting was to assess the status of negotiations on outstanding issues including the RoO and agree on the steps towards the start of commercially meaningful trading under the AfCFTA.
Although trading in the continental market started officially in January last year, challenges surrounding RoO made it difficult to identify products that could enjoy certain privileges under the agreement.
Mr Patel explained that legal modalities for trade were ready but they did not have a threshold of sufficient trade to be undertaken.
“We now have the basis to say confidently that we can commerce trade. We could not do that before because we had 70 per cent of products agreed on in 2019 when the heads of states said we must work on the implementation phase.
“We have moved that from 72 per cent of products to 88 per cent. That’s an additional 850 products that rules of origin had been agreed upon. In 2019 had already done considerable work and at the time had agreed on over 3,800 products which had RoO,” he said.
Mr Patel said the package of products that now have RoOinclude cheese to fruit juice, edible oil and fish products with RoO negotiation yet to be concluded on sugar, tobacco products, automobiles and clothing and textiles.
Describing the package as a breakthrough, he said “To the ordinary citizens on the continent, it means more jobs, more economic opportunities and Africa’s moment to say we want to industrialise. We can’t be simply the generators of raw materials for the workplaces and factories of Asia and Europe and America.”
The Council, Mr Patel said, also discussed the completion of negation on trade in services, protocols on dispute resolution, amongst other things, to bring the full dream to reality.
The Secretary-General of AfCFTA Secretariat, WamkeleMene, said the conclusion of negation on the RoO had paved the way for brisk business to begin.
He said a tariff book would be developed to provide stakeholders, especially traders with clear local content rules with respect to procedures, processes, and other information.
BY JONATHAN DONKOR
