adminHappiness Zengeni in SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt
THE establishment of a one trade regime in the continent will reduce the cost of doing business that is occasioned by the existence of multiple trade regimes and will create a single market that would be a powerful magnet to trade and investment, President Mugabe has said.
He said this during the launch of Africa’s largest economic bloc, the Tripartite Free Trade Area here yesterday.
The Tripartite FTA consists of 26 countries which make up the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the East African Community and the Southern African Development Community.
Delivering his address as the chairman of the Tripartite Integration arrangement, President Mugabe said the arrangement was unique as it makes a huge contribution towards achieving the Continental Integration agenda.
“This (the Tripartite FTA) is almost half the membership of the African Union, with a combined population of 625 million people and a gross domestic product of $1.3 trillion. If the 26 countries were one country with such a GDP, the tripartite would rank number 13 in the world.”
The idea to create a Tripartite FTA was mooted in October 2008 in Uganda as a first step towards the realisation of a Single Customs Union and ultimately the merger of the three regional economic communities.
On June 2011, Heads of State signed a declaration launching negotiations of the FTA and also agreed to prioritise industrial development in order to address the productive supply capacity constraints that most of the member countries face.
President Mugabe said the implementation of the Tripartite FTA underpinned by infrastructure and industrialisation, provides the basis for the structural transformation of the member states economies, from low productivity economies that export primary commodities without value addition, to high productivity economies that participate in the global economy through the production and export of high value processed products that are technology and skills intensive.
President Mugabe has been a champion of advocating beneficiation and value addition. On several occasions, President Mugabe has said African countries should seriously consider value addition and beneficiation, instead of raw exports, to optimise returns from natural resources.
The President said it was important for African countries to look, within themselves, ways of extracting maximum value from the exploitation of their finite natural resources.
He said that it was only through value addition and beneficiation that the continent could create sustainable jobs and bring to an end the endemic poverty on the rich continent.
The President said Africa would remain trapped in the jaws of underdevelopment if it continued to export raw materials, which was also exportation of jobs to overseas countries.
Value addition and beneficiation is one of the four clusters enshrined in Zimbabwe’s medium term economic blueprint, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-economic Transformation (Zim-Asset), which covers the five- year period from 2014 to 2018.
“Our shared experiences have demonstrated that competitive production of goods and services for an FTA that delivers jobs, economic growth and prosperity can’t be achieved without enabling infrastructure, energy and industrialisation. We need to pursue robust industrialisation policies and create jobs for our people and curb the migration that has seen our men, women and children die in their thousands in the Mediterranean Sea as they search for jobs.”
He said the historic decision taken to launch the Tripartite FTA reaffirms the whole vision and ideals of the champions of Pan Africanism namely Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sekou Toure and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere who were convinced that the political and socio- economic liberation of Africa could only be realised through the creation of a United States of Africa.
At the meeting member states signed the Sharm El Sheikh Declaration which launched the COMESA-EAC-Sadc Tripartite Free Trade Area and an agreement establishing the TFTA.
Meanwhile, President Mugabe arrived back home last night from Sharm El Sheik, Egypt.
He was welcomed at the airport by Vice Presidents Phelekezela Mphoko and Emmerson Mnangagwa, Defence Minister Sydney Sekeramayi, Minister of State for Harare Provincial Affairs Miriam Chikukwa and other senior government officials.
Online Reporter