ISDS Case Map
SACU
Southern Africa Customs Union
The Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Duke Lefhoko, has urged manufacturers to widen their marketing scope beyond the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), given the impending new trade arrangements that Botswana is negotiating with other countries.
It will be critical in the coming months to mobilise resistance to the implementation of the Interim EPA in its current format and thereby strengthen the Namibian Government's hand not to sign a final EPA with the EU. Namibia should also link up with African and international campaigns against EPAs, which have emerged in the past few years. The battle is not lost but there is little time left to prevent EPAs from becoming a new and powerful tool to promote EU interests at the expense of Africa's development needs. A new publication from the Labour Resource and Research Institute (LaRRI).
Business chambers from southern Africa believe that talk of a single Southern African Development Community (SADC) Customs Union - that would replace the Southern African Customs Unions (SACU) and Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) - is premature until a SADC Free Trade Area (FTA) is fully in place.
The United States signed a pair of agreements on Wednesday to boost trade and investment ties with countries in southern and eastern Africa, the US Trade Representative's office said.
Trade ministers from the United States and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) signed Wednesday their first Trade, Investment and Development Cooperation Agreement (TIDCA).
While acrimony persists over trade talks with the European Union (EU), the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) has had a breakthrough with bilateral negotiations with the Latin American trade bloc Mercosur.
Leaders of the South American trade bloc Mercosur meeting at a summit in Argentina have signed trade agreements with the Southern African Customs Union, as well as with Turkey and Jordan.
The Southern African Customs Union plans to sign an interim economic partnership agreement with the European Union next week. At the end of 2007, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland had all decided to initiate an Interim EPA with the EU, but South Africa had decided against. The union on Friday said all five of its members were now working together, and that the union intended to sign an interim EPA with the EU by July 1.
The executive secretary of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) Tswelelopele Moremi has said the organisation has achieved a lot since the establishment of its secretariat.
