AfCFTA Council of Ministers reach agreement on 88% of tradeable goods

Accra, Ghana is host secretariat of the AfCFTA

Agreement on Rules of Origin reached pending approval

Negotiations on trading of services at an advanced stage, Wamkele Mene

Trading activities under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement has received a major boost with regard to the Rules of Origin.

The development comes after the Council of Ministers under the free trade pact have agreed on a criteria to determine the origin of 88 percent of all products on the tariff books across the continent.

The agreement, according to Graphic Business is however pending approval by the Heads of State at the African Union Assembly which will facilitate a commercially beneficial trading under AfCFTA.

Chairman of the Council of Ministers of AfCFTA, Ebrahim Partel said, “This is a major breakthrough for AfCFTA and this allows us to now confidently say that we have a package of products that we can start trading on.”

“Our eighth meeting was very successful and historic. Over the course of the two-day meeting, we took some ground-breaking decisions which will now be conveyed to the Heads of State at the AU Assembly,” he is quoted by Graphic Business.

“The most significant of them is that we have bid down key rules of origin that allow us to now state confidently that we have a package of products that we can start trading on. In other words, we have now defined for each of them what constitutes the minimum African content for a product to be traded among countries of the continent on the basis of preferences,” he added.

Partel continued, “This is a major breakthrough and I am happy to say that this two-year period of work identified more than 850 additional products for which rules of origin have been agreed.”.

Meanwhile, the Rules of Origin under the AfCFTA will ensure that the level of value addition to raw materials and semi-finished products can be accepted as locally produced or manufactured.