Southern Africa: SADC Or Comesa ? Countries Must Choose
Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
The time is fast approaching when southern African countries will have to make up their minds - do they want to belong to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) or to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) ?
Addressing a meeting on Friday with representatives of Mozambican financial institutions, the executive secretary of SADC, Tomaz Salomao, made it clear that, sooner or later, those countries that are members of both SADC and COMESA must choose between them.
Essentially this is because, under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, no country can belong to more than one customs union - and both SADC and COMESA intend to create customs union. A further problem is that there already exists one customs union within SADC, the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), between South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland.
Salomao recalled that, shortly after taking up his post, he had met with Botswanan President Festus Mogae who told him the main reason that regional integration in southern Africa was not proceeding as quickly as desired was the problem of "dual affiliation" - and particularly the fact that southern African politicians were reluctant to talk openly about the implications of belonging to two regional communities.
Eight SADC members (Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mauritius, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Swaziland) also belong to COMESA. In fact, of the 14 SADC members, the only one that is a member of just a single regional community is Mozambique. (Even Tanzania also belongs to the East African Community).
SADC intends to introduce a free trade area in 2008, a customs union in 2010, and a common market in 2015. But the COMESA customs union is to take effect in 2008. In principle, any country that opts to join the COMESA customs union, cannot also join the SADC one.
"Some people may think they are getting more benefits out of two organisations than they would out of one", said Salomao. "But in the light of the WTO rules, they will have to decide which body they wish to belong to".
"Countries must make a choice, and choices are painful", he added. "Mozambique already made its choice in 1998, when it left COMESA. This is not a matter than can be postponed sine die".
Salomao even admitted the possibility that SADC may become, in effect, two organisations: one for political cooperation between the 14 current members, and another for economic cooperation between a smaller number.
He pointed out that there was nothing new in the plans for regional integration. Most SADC members had signed and ratified the trade protocol, which envisages a free trade area, many years ago (Mozambique in 1998).
In 2003, the SADC heads of state had adopted the timetable for integration (which goes beyond a common market to monetary union in 2016 and a common currency in 2018). Regardless of whether this timetable is regarded as feasible or not, it is what the SADC leadership accepted, Salomao pointed out, and nobody can now turn round and say they didn't know about it.
Only two countries, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, have sought derogations from the SADC Free Trade Area, Salomao added, and Angola only until December 2008. So in principle 2008 sees the fall of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade between the vast majority of SADC members.
From some quarters of the Mozambican business community there come warnings that with the removal of tariffs, many companies will go bankrupt. Salomao retorted that, under Mozambique's agreements with the World Bank and the IMF, tariffs had been falling anyway - the maximum tariff rate fell from 40 per cent in 1995 to 30 per cent in 2000, 25 per cent in 2005 and 20 per cent this year.
The SADC protocol allows member states to retain tariffs on "sensitive products" - in Mozambique's case these include milk and dairy products, maize flour, cigarettes and vehicles. Even these tariffs must go by 2012 (or 2015 in the case of some goods from South Africa).
Salomao suggested that the real problem for Mozambique was not competition from South Africa (or from Brazil, or from China), or even the difficulties involved in negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the European Union. Rather it was institutional capacity building within Mozambique. Did Mozambican negotiators have the relevant information and were they able to put it to good use? "The time of going to meetings without studying the documents first is over", he remarked dryly.
"If we don't study the information, then the risk of going over the precipice is enormous", he warned.
