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LAGOS (Reuters) – A successful African trade deal is unlikely to be implemented before the beginning of next year, an official said Friday, after the disruption caused by the new coronavirus caused the current deadline of July 1 to be non-viable.
Wamkele Mene, secretary general of Africa’s Continental Free Trade Area, told Reuters that while only the 55-member AfCFTA heads of state could sanction the deadline changes, the canceled summit among leaders scheduled for May in South Africa left few options.
“Only after the summit can it be said that we have a new negotiation date. The next opportunity for a summit is January 2, 2021, ”Mene said.
The continental free trade zone, if successful, would become the largest since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1994, uniting 1.3 billion people in a $ 3.4 trillion economic bloc.
Mene’s role is effectively the primary advisor to government leaders, who have the exclusive right to approve all parts of the agreement and its implementation.
He has advised them to defer the implementation deadline of July 1 due to extraordinary circumstances.
It would have required nations to liberalize at least 97% of their tariff lines and 90% of imports. Instead, Mene advises them to allow the free movement of goods, despite the fact that borders are closed to human trafficking as part of virus containment efforts, and to allow zero tariffs on 40 specific goods that would help fight the virus. , such as soap, disinfectant and personal protection. gear.
“The current circumstances are simply not conducive to the comprehensive trade that we had envisioned,” he said.
On the advice of the African Center for Disease Control, the final phase of the in-person trade negotiations was halted in March. This cut two months of crisis talks on technical details that would have seen hundreds of negotiators spend 17 hours days passing thousands of documents from one place to another, while they are translated between the four official languages of the bloc.
Moving these discussions online, Mene said, is not realistic.
“The technical difficulties are immense,” he said. “I’m not convinced … that doing it via video conference is feasible.”
He said efforts would be redoubled once negotiators could meet in person, and that African leaders are fully committed to the deal.
“What this pandemic has done is underline the imperative of this goal. When you rely too heavily on a particular trading partner, you are vulnerable, “he said. “The pandemic is holding us back, but I think this is going to happen.”
Libby George’s report; Additional reports from Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Hugh Lawson
