| Economic
Partnership agreements (EPAs) will be good for developing countries
in the long run.
September 19, 2006,
Business Post
Zambia, Africa
Economic Partnership agreements (EPAs) will be
good for developing countries in the long run, the European Commission
in Zambia assured, but civil society organizations says this may
not be the case unless poor countries increase their negotiating
capacity.
With fears surrounding EPAs abound, the local civil society movement
has called for strengthening of Zambia’s negotiating capacity
to adequately deal with he fears.
Zambia is currently negotiating an EPA with the
EU as port of the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) configuration,
with the COMESA Secretariat having been mandated by ESA states to
coordinate the regions negotiations. The ESA group agreed to break
down the EPA negotiations into six clusters of development issues;
market access; agriculture; fisheries trade in services; and trade
related areas.
At a recent consultative workshop on EPAs organised
by Civil Society Trade Network of Zambia (CSTNZ) and the Consumer
Unity and Trust Society- Africa Resource Centre (CUTS-ARC) it was
agreed that despite several fears. EPAs are anticipated to serve
as a key element for increased trade between Europe and Africa.
CUTS-ARC researcher Vladmir Chilinya said Zambia,
being party to the EPA negotiation is expected to benefit from increased
exports and welfare due to lower imported prices.
He, however, said the proposed trade liberalization
under EPAs has been criticized as not being suitable for reducing
poverty in Zambia.
“In addition to revenue loss nost industries in Zambia are
still in the infant stage, therefore not able to complete with European
products. This will result into unbalanced gains; however government
was urged to adequately consult with various stakeholders in different
parts of the country,” Chiliniya.
Chiliniya said concerns were raised over the continued
the lack of negotiating capacity to effectively which negatively
affects Zambia’s negotiating ability.
“It was therefore recommended that government negotiating
tam be strengthened and widened to include multi-representation
from various stakeholders,” said Chiliniya.
But Francesca Di Mauro, head of Economic and Trade-related
Cooperation at the Delegation of European Commission in Zambia,
allayed fears regarding EPAs.
She said the flooding of EU products that was being
feared would only take place in African countries had to open up
the borders to the EU as of January 1, 2008.
“This is not the case, only the EU will have
to offer zero rates on most products on that date, while the ACPs
will benefit from long transition periods. This means that ACPs
will and can keep their protection for many years in a number of
sectors, including for the ‘infants’ sectors, sensitive
products, and they can also use safeguards provision as needed”.
She said trade liberlisation would be a gradual
approach with ACPs first opening among themselves, and then eventually
with the EU.
“In the long-term, we should not forget that
lower prices for imported goods be they from neighbouring countries
or from the EU, are beneficial for consumers, but also for producers
who need to import equipment and machinery to develop their domestic
industries,” she said.
Di Mauro stressed that liberalisation is a process
that highlights which sectors are competitive in the world markets,
with a growing potential.
She said, in the process, other sectors would find themselves less
competitive and would have to restructure.
“In this process of reallocation of resources
it will be important that governments foresee social safety nets
to minimise the impact on the most affected sectors, until the labour
force slowly moves into the growing exporting sectors,” she
advised.
New fears have emerged regarding EPAs that they
may be negotiated outside the WTO domain as multilateral negotiations
are protracted.
Lillian Bwalya, an external trade economist in the Ministry of Commerce,
Trade and Industry, said the continuous shifting of WTO deadlines
could cause serious implications with regard to assimilating WTO
agreements into EPAs.
“The danger is that we will end up negotiating
issues that we will not have agreed upon at the multilateral level,”
Bwalya said at a recent post Honk-Kong national workshop on WTO.
Bwalya said the outcomes of EPAs would only be best if they resonated
with what is agreed on the multilateral level, which currently seems
unlikely.
African countries and the EU have up to December 2007 to conclude
EPAs but it seems unlikely that speedy movement will made on the
part of the WTO to conclude the current Doha Round to douse these
fears.
The Doha Round of WTO talks was suspended in July after some five
years of negotiations , as major countries left the negotiating
table after failing to reach a common agreement. It is not clear
when they will resume.
If WTO talks had been completed on their initial
deadline of end-2004, African countries would have had three years
on hand to assimilate some of the multilateral trade agreements
into EPAs negotiations.
“The WTO timeline keeps shifting but the
EPA deadline still stands and wwe are found grappling with how we
can synchronise the two,” Bwalya said.
But Di Mauro said these fears were “unfounded”.She
said EPAs would be within globally acceptable rules.
Di Mauro said previous special preferential treatments granted by
the EU to African, Caribbean, Pacific (ACP) states was done on a
waiver basis from WTO members. As normally preferences should be
the same for all developing countries and not just the ACPs.
Di Mauro said the waiver was granted at a high cost in terms of
concessions within the WTO and that during the negotiations of the
Cotonou Agreement in 2000, both the ACPs and the EC had agreed together
to go rather for a fully WTO-compatible EPA agreement..
“The compatibility derives from the fact
that EPAs will, in the long-term, be a reciprocal agreement. That
is, a Free Trade Area between the EU and the ACPs. However since
the WTO requires that ‘substantially all’ trade between
the EU and the ACPs is liberalised, this leaves some room for the
ACPs to protect certain priority sensitive sectors, or invoking
safeguard measures if necessary, hence allowing some asymmetry in
the Agreements,” Di Mauro said.
Di Mauro saif there are many Regional Trade Agreements in the world
that are negotiated bilaterally and outside the multilateral arena.
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