The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has over the past 11 months recorded more progress on programmes aimed to facilitate industrial development, finance and investment, and trade in goods and services among Member States.
This was said by Mr Alcides Monteiro, Senior Programme Officer – Customs, Directorate of Finance Investments and Customs, during a SADC Trade, Industry, Finance and Investment (TIFI) Thematic Group meeting held on 10th November 2022.
The meeting was co-chaired by Mr Sadwick L. Mtonakutha, Director of Finance, Investment and Customs (FIC) at the SADC Secretariat, and Ms Annelene Bremer, Counsellor for Development Cooperation from the German Embassy in Botswana.
Mr Monteiro said that 25 out of 63 outputs, or 40 percent deliverables of the Multi Year Action Plans 2021-2023, had been successfully completed; 37 out of the 63 (59 percent) deliverables are making good progress and only one out of the 63 (one percent) outputs has not made substantial progress between November 2021 and October 2022.
The completed outcomes include the SADC electronic Certificate of Origin (e-CoO) Framework, whose live transmission was launched in September 2022 in Malawi where three Member States, Eswatini, Malawi, and Zambia demonstrated the exchange of the e-CoO. More capacity building strategies have been planned to bring more Member States to implement the e-CoO Framework.
SADC on 7th September 2022 took an important step towards enhancing seamless flow of intra-regional trade when it launched the e-CoO in Blantyre, Malawi. The e-CoO is intended to address the challenges encountered with the use of manual Certificate of Origin by simplifying customs procedures, enhancing e-Commerce, eliminating fraud, improving record management and statistical data, reducing cross-border certificate verification time as well as reducing the cost of doing business.
Mr Monteiro said the SADC Simplified Trade Regime (STR) for small cross border traders has also been developed during the period under review. The STR Framework aims to reduce barriers to trade by simplifying the customs procedures and processes. Its implementation will support small traders by lowering transaction costs associated with formal trade. The STR Framework implementation is based on bilateral and voluntary basis and the capacity building programmes in Member States were undertaken in July and August 2022. So far, Malawi, Mozambique and United Republic of Tanzania have indicated interests in implementing the framework and the SADC Secretariat will support the negotiations between Member States.
The configuration of national conformity assessment landscape of each Member State on the harmonisation of standards and formulations; and Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures have also been developed and analysed. SPS measures are quarantine and biosecurity actions which are applied to protect human, animal or plant life or health from risks arising from the introduction, establishment and spread of pests and diseases and from risks arising from additives, toxins and contaminants in food and feed.
Regional guidelines on conformity assessment were developed and presented for validation and are now awaiting the final draft. The guidelines provide mechanisms through which different pillars of quality infrastructure (standards, technical regulations, accreditation and metrology) can contribute to ensure a coordinated conformity.
Among the ongoing activities with good progress is the SADC Protocol on Trade in Services where State Parties are preparing their National Implementation Plans with support from the Secretariat. A business guide was launched in Lilongwe, Malawi, during the 33rd Committee of Ministers (CMT) of trade meeting. Service studies will be validated during the 44th Trade Negotiating Forum-Services meeting to be held towards the end of November 2022
The Protocol on Trade in Services entered into force on 13 January 2022 following the deposit of instruments of ratification at the Secretariat by Malawi. The submission by Malawi enabled the threshold of ratification by two-thirds of Member States set by the Protocol for its entry into force to be met. Sector studies have been finalised on business, health and educational services while work is ongoing to assess the situation with regard to three other sectors.
Also ongoing is the implementation of the Mozambique National Strategy of the SADC Cross Border Management which has been developed and noted by the CMT Meeting held in July 2022. More support to Member States will be provided to develop their national strategies.
In addition, the Protocol on Industry has been ratified by five Member States, namely Angola, Botswana, Mauritius, Namibia, and Seychelles. The Protocol on Industry is aimed at bolstering the sector and eventually intra-regional trade. This will enable SADC to achieve inclusive industrial development.
On capacity building on industrialisation, Mr Monteiro said all Member States have been supported in policy design, formulation and implementation through the Enhancing the Quality of Industrial Policies' (EQuIP) methodology. EQuIP methodology seeks to design industrial policies and diagnose and equips industries with the technical aspects of industrial policy design and diagnosis taking into account the priority areas and regional short-term and long-term goals as indicated by the SADC Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap (2015-2063).
The Region is also preparing for the 2023 SADC Quality Awards. A short-term expert has been engaged to undertake a review of the European Union (EU)-SADC-Economic Partnership Agreement to establish its impact on the stakeholders. Country specific validation workshops were held for Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa. Preparations are underway for validation workshops for Eswatini and Mozambique as well as the Regional validation meeting.
The assessment of the implementation and relevance of the SADC Protocol on Finance and Investment in light of new demands of industrialisation and deeper regional integration is at validation stage. The development of the SADC Investment Climate Scorecard is nearing completion and a validation workshop with Member States is planned for January 2022. The objective of the SADC Investment Climate Scorecard is to improve the investment and business environment in the Region to foster regional integration. With support from the EU, World Bank, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Member States are developing the scorecard covering 22 economic sectors as part of a process expected to be completed later this year.
Mr Monteiro, however, said there was no substantive progress on the Protocol on Trade in Services under the Tripartite Free Trade agreement (TFTA), but the terms of reference to engage a consultant to undertake the study on the complementarity between the TFTA and AfCFTA has been finalised.
The meeting received an update of the SADC e-CoO which was launched in Lilongwe, Malawi, in September 2022. Participants heard that Eswatini, Malawi and Zambia had been integrated into the e-CoO system, while Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, and United Republic of Tanzania were in advanced phases of integration. South Africa and Zimbabwe were still in the inception phase.
Ms Anneline Morgan, Senior Programme Officer, Science, Trade and Innovation in the Directorate of Industrial Development and Trade, gave an update on the International Property Rights (IPR), the status of Member States on IPRs, and what SADC is doing to create awareness on the benefits of IPRs to small and medium enterprises and to Member States.
Ms Morgan was part of a team from the Secretariat that conducted a hybrid regional capacity building training workshops on strengthening of regional and national IPRs and Trade Related Intellectual Property Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) compliance in Harare, Zimbabwe from 5th to 15th October 2022. The trainings, attended by more than 40 participants from Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, covered the leather and anti-retrovirals value chains.
The training workshops were convened under the Support to the Industrialisation and Productive Sectors (SIPS) programme funded by the EU and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), in collaboration with the Africa Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO). The objective of SIPS is to contribute to the SADC industrialisation and regional integration agenda by improving the performance and growth of selected regional value chains as well as the related services within the agro-processing and pharmaceutical sectors.
