The selection: Friday, 12 June

Mozambique postpones signing up Tripartite FTA (StarAfrica)

“There are questions that have to be studied and about the origin of imported products, and their selection, about which areas should be liberalized, and where liberalization could be gradual. This entire exercise has to be done in such a way that the growth of our industry is not damaged by membership of the TFTA,” said Do Rosario who represented President Filipe Nyusi at the summit.

“Mozambique has a Five-Year Government Programme, which concerns the creation of better living standards for Mozambicans, and this means creating more jobs, more income, and getting industry to work, so it is important to check whether or not the agreement benefits Mozambique’s exports to the entire region, and whether imports under the agreement will not create difficulties for the rebirth of national industry”, the Prime Minister added.

Phyllis Wakiagas: 'Significance of Tripartite Free Trade Area launch' (Business Daily)

Legal scrubbing of the document is expected to be complete by July 2015. Despite this roadmap, it will not take no less than one year to finalise everything. Though the main text agreement is finished, the negotiations are by no means over and done with. Certain critical elements remain unnegotiated such as the rules of origin, trade remedies and tariff offers. [The author is CEO-designate of Kenya Association of Manufacturers]

Tripartite leadership changes hands (COMESA)

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has handed over the chairmanship of the COMESA-EAC-SADC tripartite arrangement to his counterpart,  Hailemariam Desalegn, Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, and Chairman of the COMESA Authority a term of one year. Likewise, the Chairmanship of the Tripartite Task Force Mr Sindiso Ngwenya who is also the Secretary General of COMESA, handed over the mantle to his counterpart in the SADC Dr. Stergomena Tax.

Q&A: The AU Trade Commissioner on the New Cape-to-Cairo Common Market (Daily Maverick)

For once, the African Union Summit is going to have something to show for all its talk of regional integration. The Tripartite Free Trade Area, signed in Egypt on Wednesday, creates a common market across 26 countries, and has the potential to revolutionise trade on the continent. Simon Allison spoke to the AU trade commissioner about why the deal is so important – and why the rest of Africa will have to catch up quickly.

Aid FTA formation, State urges AFREXIM Bank (Zambia Daily Mail)

African free trade pact long overdue (editorial comment, Business Day)

Swaziland: TFTA could salvage threatened sugar (Times of Swaziland)

Doing Business in South Africa 2015 (Doing Business)

Doing Business in South Africa 2015 - the first World Bank Group sub-national study on the ease of doing business in South Africa - compares business regulations in 9 South African cities: Buffalo City, Cape Town, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini, Johannesburg, Mangaung, Msunduzi, Nelson Mandela Bay and Tshwane. The report measures regulations relevant to 6 stages in the life of a small to medium-size domestic firm: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, enforcing contracts, and trading across borders. The report measures cross-border trade through 4 maritime ports: Cape Town, Durban, Ngqura, and Port Elizabeth.

AGOA review could be chance for SA to make good with US (Business Day)

Whether the out-of-cycle review clause will survive consideration of the bill by the House of Representatives remains to be seen, but SA is clearly not impressed by the prospect of having its trade and investment climate subject to scrutiny by the US. This is likely to be a challenging process that will raise some uncomfortable issues for the government. However, approaching the issue defensively and negatively will probably make it much worse. The truth is that the economic relationship between the two countries has been tense for a number of years and there was a degree of inevitability that it would reach a tipping point sooner rather than later. Both parties need to embrace the review as an opportunity to clear the air and to reassess their interactions on trade and investment issues. [The author: Catherine Grant Makokera]

East Africa's Budget day: selected updates

Security, debt and infrastructure dominate budget of regional states (New Times)

Four of East Africa’s five economies, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya unveiled ambitious expenditure plans for Financial Year 2015/16, with security, debt repayment and infrastructure dominating the region’s sector allocations. The new financial year starts July 1.

Rwanda: 2015/16 Budget: Civil society laud reduction in aid dependency (New Times)

Foreign sugar cost increased to protect Kenya millers (Business Daily)

Struggling cane millers received a boost after duty on imported sugar was increased 130% to protect local production from cheaper imports. Treasury secretary Henry Rotich noted that most local millers are on the verge of collapse due to the influx of cheap sugar from regional countries, mismanagement and ageing equipment. [Kenya’s budget documentation can be accessed here] 

Uganda: Why the Budget hit Shs24 trillion (Daily Monitor)

Uganda: Budget speech for financial year 2015/16

Tanzania: Mkuya to fund 22trn/- budget from internal sources (IPPMedia)

Finance minister Saada Salum Mkuya yesterday tabled the 22trn/- government budget for the 2015/16 fiscal year unveiling plans to slash tax exemptions and charges on agricultural inputs, capital and medical supplies. The government budget was tabled in the National Assembly alongside with other East African Community (EAC) nations of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

Tanzania: Govt eyes ‘super investors’ as it clamps down on tax exemptions (The Citizen)

The importance of coal (Statistics SA)

Calls to decrease the world’s dependence on coal as an energy source are well intentioned. Lower use would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and less demand would lower the environmental risk of coal mining. However, as the world moves away from coal, South Africa will need to consider the implications. The country depends heavily on the mineral as a source of economic value, employment and energy. It might come as a surprise to many that coal is now more important to the South African economy than gold. The coal mining industry contributed approximately R37 billion to the economy in 1993, with gold contributing R115 billion (value added at constant 2010 prices). In 2013, coal contributed R51 billion to South Africa’s economy, compared with gold’s R31 billion.

Mozambique’s Five Year Plan: implications for the business environment (SPEED)

On the 14th of April 2015 the Mozambican government’s five year plan was passed into law under Resolution 12/2015. The five year plan is based on the manifesto of the party elected to lead the country, in this case FRELIMO, and also incorporates actions which will guide the government during its mandate. It is intended to be a high-level vision statement rather than a specific action plan, specifics being found in the strategy documents and work plans of the individual ministries.The plan (Plano Quinquenal do Governo) is therefore designed to orient the government and other stakeholders.

There is no specific section on trade or regional integration in the PQG. Relevant issues are spread throughout the document, but mainly found under priorities 3 and 4. There is no clear vision as regards regional trade and integration.

IFC explores Zim business environment (NewsDay)

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) seeks to help the private sector and is on an exploratory mission after cutting ties with Zimbabwe country over a decade ago, an executive said yesterday. IFC director for East and Southern Africa Cheikh Oumar Seydi said the trip was an exploratory one and the team was in Zimbabwe after some constructive meetings over the years.

RBZ buries Zimdollar (NewsDay)

Central Africa still burdened by multidimensional crisis, Security Council told (UN News Centre)

The Central Africa region is still facing many challenges, including an economic crisis aggravated by the drop in oil prices, rising youth unemployment, and terrorist activities, as well as the cross-border impact of crises in Central African Republic (CAR) and Burundi, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for the sub-region warned today. “The crisis in the CAR continued to have regional and multidimensional consequences with almost half a million refugees; ongoing gross violations of human rights; growing gang-related criminality; and environmental degradation in refugee areas,” Abdoulaye Bathily said, briefing the Security Council about the situation for the first time since November 2014. [Presidential Statement] 

Visa confusion hinders trade, travel in central Africa (Reuters)

A month after six central African nations scrapped visa requirements for their citizens, the long lines at the Kye-Ossi border crossing in southern Cameroon show the challenges facing efforts to boost trade on the continent. The town of 45,000 people lives on trade in contraband goods with neighbouring Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. Cameroon, the region's breadbasket, exports food while wine and spirits come back across the border from Equatorial Guinea, almost none of it paying duty, a customs source said.

ECOWAS: member states endorse policy for gender mainstreaming in energy access (AfDB)

Toure noted that the ECOWAS Policy for Gender Mainstreaming in Energy Access must take priority in Member States’ plans to bring development, adding that in order to achieve universal access to sustainable energy by 2030 gender considerations must feature significantly in the implementation of SE4All initiative. According to Odera, “Lives can be transformed when gender dimensions are integrated in development policies”. The ECOWAS Policy for Gender Mainstreaming in Energy Access is being developed in a context of severe energy crises - with countries in the region having some of the lowest modern energy consumption rates in the world - and gender inequalities that hinder Member States from harnessing and utilizing, fully, both its male and female human capital to address its energy challenges.

Jacob Zuma: 'Infrastructure is the key to Africa’s sustainable development' (The Presidency)

Donald Kaberuka: 'I was furious when they called it a Chinese-built highway' (Mail and Guardian Africa)

Trade, global value chains and wage-income inequality (OECD)

The objective of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between inequality and trade by revisiting the links between one important component of income inequality—wage inequality—and the proliferation of global value chains. This is, to our knowledge, the first empirical attempt at linking these two phenomena since the emergence of measures of GVC activity based on inter-country input-output tables and trade in value added data in recent years. The data suggests that whilst some emerging countries have experienced reductions in wage inequality, most developed countries have seen their wage inequality rise. Where the links between GVC participation and wage inequality are concerned, the findings show that:

Cecilia Malmström: 'An integrated EU trade and foreign policy' (European Commission)

Trade-led growth strategies have been at the heart of the success we have seen across the developing world in recent decades. A country like Vietnam is an excellent example. Since the 1980s its exports are up more than 50-fold. In parallel, the number of its people living in absolute poverty dropped by 42 million; and the share of the population that had completed secondary school tripled. Europe's trade policy supports this kind of development in different ways:

SA, UAE move to boost trade relationship (IOL)

South Africa:  Satsa wants visa laws put on ice, not reviewed (Business Day)

Capacity – the critical enabler for Agenda 2063 (ACBF) 

Peace in an age of terrorism: can the AU achieve Vision 2020? (ISS)  

AU summit could repair SA’s role in xenophobia (Bloomberg) 

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This week in the news

Follow the links below to read tralac’s daily news selections for the past week:

The selection: Thursday, 11 June 2015

The selection: Wednesday, 10 June 2015

The selection: Tuesday, 9 June 2015

The selection: Monday, 8 June 2015

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This post has been sourced on behalf of tralac and disseminated to enhance trade policy knowledge and debate. It is distributed to over 300 recipients across Africa and internationally, serving in the AU, RECS, national government trade departments and research and development agencies. Your feedback is most welcome. Any suggestions that our recipients might have of items for inclusion are most welcome. Richard Humphries (Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; Twitter: @richardhumphri1)