African Union Commissioner for Trade and Industry, Fatima Haram Acyl called on African countries that are members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to ratify its Trade Facilitation Agreement.

She said it created a blueprint for customs modernisation amongst its 162 members.

This was stated during the opening of Africa Trade Facilitation Forum at the Africa Trade Week 2016, organised jointly by the African Union and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the African Trade Policy Centre.

Africa must do what it takes at home first by addressing the whole supply and value chain and the take advantage of the removal of quotas and improved market access while available as well as of a regional reduction of tariffs worldwide, as it continues to strengthen its regional and global integration, according to the Commissioner.

“As the vision of the AU is to double intra-African trade by 2022, we count on member states to carry out the necessary trade facilitation measures that will ensure the tightening of all loopholes in order to attain that objective,” she said.

“The commitment of African countries in those different agreements demonstrates before all the evident willingness to integrate more in the world trade and to benefit from it to accelerate their development.”

The CFTA presented the Continent with critical opportunity for African development.

In December 2013, WTO members concluded negotiations on a Trade Facilitation Agreement at the Bali Ministerial Conference, as part of a wider “Bali Package”.

It looks at how procedures and controls governing the movement of goods across national borders can be improved to reduce associated cost burdens and maximise efficiency while safeguarding legitimate regulatory objectives.

The aim of facilitating trade is not simply to expand, Fatima adds, but also to focus on the border goal of sustainable and broad-based economic growth, with the expectation that economic growth becomes a catalyst for poverty eradication among the African people.

TFA will enter into force upon ratification by the two-thirds of the WTO members. As of December 16, 2015, 63 ratifications on 162 had been obtained. Seven African States ratified the agreement: Botswana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mauritania, Niger, Togo and Zambia.

Recent work by the South Africa based Trade Law Centre (TRALAC) suggests that a similar level of increase could be achieved through trade in services liberalisation, with most African countries seeing their income rise by over one per cent and all African countries and regions studied benefiting in response to a 50pc reduction in services trade restrictiveness.

“To benefit fully from this global trade opening, Africa needs to reinforce its production capacities, thus to modernise the trade infrastructure and to mobilise the financial resources,” she said.

CFTA can be expected to give a serious boost to Africa’s industrial sector, with intra-African trade in industrial products expected to rise by $60-billion a year due to a CFTA in goods if accompanied by robust trade facilitation measures.

Only 12 out of the 42 African WTO Members have ratified the TFA.

During the twenty-seventh Ordinary Session of the Summit of Heads of State and Governments held in Kigali this year a decision of 0.2% levy on every imported goods into the continent to finance African Union Operational Programs and Peace Support Operations Budget starting from 2017 was imposed.

Ministers of finance then met and decided to set up a committee of ten assisted by experts to work out modalities of implementation of that levy.

The 2015 world trade report, entirely dedicated to the analysis of the TFA, estimates that the implementation of the agreement would lead especially to the annual increase of the world exportations by trillions of dollars and a reduction of the trade costs between 9.6% and 23.1%.

The developing countries and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are considered as the major beneficiaries of the TFA. Indeed, more than a reduction of trade costs of almost 16% (18% for manufactured goods and 10.4% for agricultural goods), those countries will take significant advantage of the diversification of their exportations in terms of goods and partners, favored by the agreement, the report further states.