Pretoria keen to reopen talks on free trade agreement

Date: 03/10/1996

SOUTH Africa may yet be the first country to tell the EU that it does not want a free trade deal with the 15-nation bloc.

But if negotiators at the European Commission were fearing the past few months of silence from Pretoria meant that was about to happen, they can now breathe easily - at least until later this month.

After refusing to continue discussing a Commission offer in March, President Nelson Mandela's government is nearing completion of its own offer and is anxious to restart talks.

“We are eager for negotiations to reconvene as soon as possible,” said a South African trade official, adding: “We are fairly confident that we will be able to hold talks this month and we have told the Commission that.”

Rejecting the Commission's first negotiating position, South Africa claimed it did not allow enough imports of South African agricultural produce and would therefore quash the country's one real export possibility.

Pretoria also objected to what it saw as plans to invade South Africa with EU industrial goods as soon as free trade was established.

South African negotiators told the Commission that they would go home and draft their own negotiating mandate and present it in the autumn.

That presentation was originally expected last month, but despite putting in long hours in July and August, South African officials are still working on the details and say their list is now more likely to be aired at the end of this month.

Pretoria long ago rejected Commission complaints that it was moving too slowly by pointing out that EU member states took months to agree on the Commission's proposed negotiating mandate.

South African officials are now focusing on agricultural and industrial sectors, with an eye to finding an agreement that would both serve their interests and still be compatible with world trading rules.

“We want something that would be acceptable to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and not something unorthodox like the Lomé Convention regime,” said one trade official, referring to the EU's one-way trading benefits for developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Within WTO limits, Pretoria is considering what kind of transitional periods it could ask for to allow South Africa more time to prepare for European competition when the free trade flood gates open. It is also looking at what percentage of trade is covered by a 'free trade' agreement and whether that requires certain ratios in different sectors.

Pretoria wants any trading deal it enters into to help its half-developed, half-developing country gear up to meet future challenges.

“We were disappointed that the EU mandate did not have more consideration for our development,” said the official.

Pretoria needs to worry about more than just South Africa's development. Since it is linked to three neighbours in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), it must consider the needs of Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland as well.

Although South Africa has not yet decided whether to consult its customs union partners before starting negotiations with the EU, it will have to bring them into the picture at some stage.

“We would not do anything without SACU support,” said an official. “We are committed to exploring a free trade agreement, but we want something that has regional and developmental interests in it.”