ISDS Case Map
Botswana
Angola will join the Free Trade Zone of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) in 2017, if the country takes the necessary steps
Botswana Minister of Trade and Industry Vincent Seretse has met with European Union Trade Commissioner Cecilia Mamstrom in Gaborone to discuss the finalisation of Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations between the EU and the Southern African Development Community (SADC)
Late last year, the African cyberspace was buzzing with rumours that the region’s oldest trade agreement, the Southern African Customs Union or SACU was about to be finally killed off by South Africa. From Windhoek to Cape Town to Mbabane, trade policy wonks were debating what the most recent moves from Pretoria regarding SACU really meant.
Botswana has escaped the imposition of an amendment which would have charged higher duties on the country's exports to the European Union after 2014 thereby dealing a deathblow to local sectors such as agriculture, minerals and manufacturing.
Economic Planning and Investment Promotion Minister Tapiwa Mashakada has decried the lack of positive outcomes from the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements Zimbabwe has signed with a number of countries.
The global economic crisis, along with other evolving structural factors within SACU, could cut a P5-billion permanent hole in revenues that Botswana receives from the customs union, the IMF estimates.
The song of Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional integration is sung so loudly that even the deaf can hear it. But my recent experience in Windhoek, Namibia tends to prove that the reality on the ground does not match the rhetoric.
A market access regulation giving SADC states, including Botswana, duty and quota-free access to the European Union is expected to elapse soon, potentially squeezing the affected states out of the world's biggest market for beef, minerals, textiles and other products.
Ahead of the August round of negotiations between the SADC EPA group and the EU, the Acting President of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Parliamentary Assembly says the region should be afforded more time to reach a final decision on a comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU.
The Ministry of Trade and Industry is in the process of establishing a national body under the 2002 Southern African Customs Union (SACU) Agreement.
