PS for Trade elaborates on the benefits of AFCFTA for Seychelles |26 June 2021
PS Mangroo and Mr Morin during the press conference yesterday (Photo: Joena Meme)
Businesses in the private sector are being urged to inform the department of trade of their favoured export and import markets, including of services, on the African continent so as to benefit zero percent tariffs and preferential rates while doing business on the continent.
This follows the ratification of the African Continent Free Trade Agreement (AFCFTA) aimed at providing preferential rates and zero percent tariffs through its objective of eliminating or reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers among the 55 member states to provide a single market for goods and services and facilitation by movement of persons in order to deepen the economic integration and prosperity.
The principal secretary for Trade in the Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Trade, Cillia Mangroo, made the call in a press conference held yesterday morning at the department of Trade’s head office, Maison Esplanade, to further explain Seychelles’s position vis a vis the AFCFTA agreement following its ratification by the National Assembly on June 14, 2021. Also present was the chief negotiator for Trade in the department, Charles Morin.
Among the continent’s 55 countries that signed the agreement for the formulation of AFCFTA on March 21, 2018, 39 member states, including Seychelles, have already ratified the agreement. Parts of the agreement includes the liberalisation of 90% of a country’s market access between five to ten years with 7% that can be designated sensitive products and 3% of tariff lines that can be excluded from liberalisation entirely.
“The agreement will benefit Seychelles in terms of getting products at a cheaper price, including our products being sold in the region at a preferential ratem,” PS Mangroo said, noting that through negotiations, certain products could even attain zero percent tariff deductions.
PS Mangroo said the African continent has a huge and diverse market resource and that through AFCFTA, will provide market access for the local businessmen and businesswomen to open up local market.
She noted that the free trade agreement has not come into force in the country at the moment and that we will start to do business with the 54 AFCFTA member states as soon as the ratified document is assented to.
She said that apart from goods that will be allowed to enter the country at zero percent tax, products in relation to national security, fiscal revenue, livelihood and industrialization will be taxed such as in the case of agricultural and alcohol products.
The PS explained that the country was a bit behind in ratifying the document because of continued negotiations on certain matters of interest for the country such as the ‘Rules of Origin’ with regard to taxes in relation to our fisheries industry which now forms part of the agreement and in the benefit of the local entrepreneurs. Rules of origin are the criteria needed to determine the national source of a product. Their importance is derived from the fact that duties and restrictions in several cases depend upon the source of imports.
PS Mangroo called on business entrepreneurs to take on the opportunity to do business with their counterpart on the African continent and to refrain from looking at African products as inferior as most of the countries on the continent produce high quality goods and products, including services.
Mr Morin said the AFCFTA agreement has provided the local private sector with the opportunity to be exposed for businesses with 1.2 billion people around the continent with a USD 2.5 trillion in GDP.
He added that Seychelles is still engaged in negotiations with member states of AFCFTA for better deals in relation to business, communication, financial, tourism and travel-related and transport services including other topics such as competition policy, intellectual property, e-commerce and women in business, among others, with which negotiations are yet to start.
Mr Morin said that the African Trade Observatory (ATO), a business platform, has been put in place to allow businesses to advertise their products and to access the raw materials.
The idea of AFCFTA signed by heads of State on March 21, 2018 in Kigali, Rwanda, was to create a single continental market for goods and services, with free movement of business persons and investments, and thus pave the way for accelerating the establishment of the Continental Customs Union and the African customs union.
Patrick Joubert