Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies on Friday raised concern over a rise in trade protectionism.
Davies, attending the twentieth African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Ministerial Committee meeting, in Brussels, this week, said sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and standards were increasingly creating barriers to international trade, impacting small and medium-sized enterprises.
ACP Ministers meeting this week are focusing on issues of protectionism, economic partnership agreements (EPAs) and the Brexit state of play.
Davies’ comments followed a bilateral meeting with European Union (EU) Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström earlier this week, where it was highlighted that there was a need to assist small, medium-sized and microenterprises to ensure they could leverage the market openings created by EPAs and enable them to meet the SPS measures and standards requirements to enter the EU market.
The EU has been negotiating EPAs with the ACP countries since 2002.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) EPA, of which South Africa is part, is the first full EPA to be concluded and it provisionally entered into force on October 10, 2016.
“The SADC EPA offered South Africa an opportunity to improve on the preferential market access previously offered under the Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement,” Davies concluded.