Home | Business | ESWATINI 2ND HIGHEST ON GOODS MOVEMENT

ESWATINI 2ND HIGHEST ON GOODS MOVEMENT

14/12/2020 06:36:00 BY ASHMOND NZIMA

Font size:

MBABANE - governments will look to opportunities provided by free trade and regional economic activity facilitated through the customs union to recover from COVID-19 effects.

Afrobarometer has surveyed how citizens in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) see the region’s central concerns of regional economic integration and ease of trade and movement. According to its website, Afrobarometer is a pan-African, independent, non-partisan research network that measures public attitudes on economic, political, and social matters in Africa. Its secretariat headquarters are in Accra, Ghana. Findings from Afrobarometer surveys in the five SACU countries show that citizens hold decidedly mixed views on these questions. Attitudes toward free cross-border movement range from massive support in Lesotho to equally solid rejection in Botswana, while South Africans are more likely to ban than to welcome foreign workers. Eswatini is ranked second behind Lesotho.

“Support is high, but variable across countries, for protecting domestic businesses from foreign competition.

“The member countries come closer to consensus on two issues; that it’s difficult to cross international borders and that foreign traders should be allowed to do business to ensure a good selection of low-cost consumer goods,” concluded the survey.

organisation

Meanwhile, SACU is the oldest organisation of its kind in the world, with roots dating back to 1889. It unites Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa in promoting economic development through regional coordination of trade.

All five SACU member states are also part of the 16-state Southern African Development Community (SADC). At least 13 of the 16 SADC member states are part of the regional economic bloc’s Free Trade Area. Importantly, on January 1, 2021, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will resume operation, opening trade in a common market of 1.4 billion Africans. All SACU member states except Botswana, have ratified the AfCFTA agreement, and the customs union has put forward a common tariff order to effect membership in the AfCFTA.

This publication recently reported that many of Africa’s most important economies, including South Africa and Nigeria, will start duty-free trading of goods among themselves on January 1, 2021 when the eagerly-awaited AfCFTA goes into operation. So far, all of Africa’s states except Eritrea had signed the AfCFTA and 34 have ratified it. In a recent interview, FESBC Vice President Hezekiel Mabuza had said the AfCFTA would cut down on bureaucracies that were a stumbling block and it would help harmonise trade policies as they were previously not complementing each other.

“The only challenge would be that not much awareness has been raised in most of our SMEs on it and they have not invested much on technology to take advantage of such trade policies, but we are slowly getting there. We appreciate such initiatives because they would take us forward,” he had said.