Trade Preferential Agreements

The main Trade Agreements between South Africa and the rest of the world currently are:

	Type of Agreement	Countries Involved	Main Objective/Terms	Products Involved
Customs Union
Southern African Customs Union (SACU)	Customs Union	South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland	Duty free movement of goods with a common external tariff on goods entering any of the countries from outside the SACU	All products
Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)
Southern African Development Community (SADC) FTA	Free Trade Agreement	Between 12 SADC Member States	A FTA, with 85% duty-free trade achieved in 2008. The 15% of trade, constituting the "sensitive list", is expected to be liberalised from 2009 to 2012 when SADC attains the status of a fully-fledged FTA with almost all tariff lines traded duty free.	Most products
EFTA-SACU Free Trade Agreement (FTA)	Free Trade Agreement	SACU and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) -Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland	Tariff reductions on selected goods	Industrial goods (including fish and other marine products) and processed agricultural products. Basic agricultural products are covered by bilateral agreements with individual EFTA States
Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs)
SACU-Southern Common Market (Mercosur) PTA	Preferential Trade Agreement	SACU and Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay	Tariff reductions on selected goods. It is not expected to enter into force before some time in 2012	About 1,000 product lines on each side of the border
Non-reciprocal Trade Arrangements
Generalised System of Preferences (GSP)	Unilateral preferences granted under the enabling clause of the WTO that are not contractually binding upon the benefactors	Offered to Botswana as developing country by the EU, Norway, Switzerland, Russia, Turkey, the US, Canada and Japan	Products from developing countries qualify for preferential market access	Specified industrial and agricultural products
Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA)	Unilateral assistance measure	Granted by the US to 39 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries	Preferential access to the US market through lower tariffs or no tariffs on some products	Duty free access to the US market under the combined AGOA/GSP programme stands at approximately 7,000 product tariff lines.
Other Agreements
Trade, Investment and Development Cooperation Agreement (TIDCA)	Cooperative framework agreement	SACU and US	Makes provision for the parties to negotiate and sign agreements relating to sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures (SPS), customs cooperation and technical barriers to trade (TBT). It also establishes a forum of engagement of any matters of mutual interest, including capacity-building and trade and investment promotion.	None
Current Trade Negotiations
SACU-India PTA	Preferential Trade Agreement	SACU and India	Tariff reductions on selected goods	SACU and India are in the process of exchanging tariff requests
SADC-EAC-COMESA Tripartite FTA	Free Trade Agreement	26 countries with a combined GDP of US$860 billion and a combined population of approximately 590 million people	The Tripartite Framework derives its basis from the Lagos Plan of Action and the Abuja Treaty establishing the African Economic Community (AEC), which requires rationalisation of the continent's regional economic communities. The FTA will be negotiated over the next three years, with the possibility of an additional two years for completion.	The Tripartite initiative comprises three pillars that will be pursued concurrently, in order to ensure an equitable spread of the benefits of regional integration: market integration, infrastructure development and industrial development. The FTA will, as a first phase, cover only trade in goods; services and other trade-related areas will be covered in a second phase.

Source: (https://ec.europa.eu/trade/)

• Signed TFTA Agreement and Declaration 10 June 2015
• SACU Status Register March 2018
• SACU Status Register June 2017
• SACU FTA Agreement
• SADCEPA