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AFRICAN TRADE DEALS
found at javno.com/ June 22, 2007 17:45h African countries must agree new trade deals with Europe by the end of the year or risk losing valuable commerce, European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Louis Michel said on Friday. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) outlawed the European Union's preferential trade terms for nearly 80 of its African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) former colonies in 2001, but granted a waiver until the end of 2007. Michel said during a trip to Ghana's capital Accra that reforms at home were the surest way to improve African economies, rather than prolonging that waiver. "Arguing in favour of extending the deadline ... is not reasonable, it is not intellectually honest. This is a challenge to the African countries, they have to reform the systems they are living in, they have to improve governance," he said.
"They will not be better off if they wait one or two years more. It will not get better, it will get worse," he told a news conference on the sidelines of an Africa-Europe business forum. Michel said Europe's markets were already becoming increasingly open to African trade, adding that African exports to Europe would be duty- and quota-free by 2015. "I feel our African partners don't understand that the European Union is the best partner of the African countries ... The EU imports more agricultural goods from the developing world than the rest of the G8 together," he said. Most ECOWAS member states benefit from preferential exports under the EU's "Everything But Arms" initiative for very poor countries.
But exports from some of the region's bigger economies such as Nigeria and Ghana are likely to see higher tariffs once the WTO waiver expires. |
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