Documents containing information on the contract and a summary of the trade agreement between the United Kingdom and the Member States of the Southern African Customs Union and Mozambique. The SACUM-UK EPA is one of the UK`s trade agreements signed at an early stage. The SACUM-UK EPA was completed on 9 October 2019 and officially entered into force on 1 January 2021. Essentially, the SACUM-UK EPA is a renewal agreement of the SADC-EU EPA aimed at ensuring a smooth transition to new trade relations for all parties. In order to facilitate the continuity of trade relations and the smooth transition of agreements previously concluded between the parties, the SACUM-UK EPA allows immediate duty-free and quota-free access to all goods (except arms and ammunition) originating in BELMN countries. Botswana, like other SACU countries, has committed to progressively liberalise tariffs on goods originating in the UK and imported from the UK, with a scope similar to commitments to the EU: 74% of all tariff items are fully liberalised, 12% partially liberalised and 14% excluded from liberalisation. With regard to technical barriers to trade and sanitary and phytosanitary measures, the EPA does not provide for legally binding obligations, but a set of non-binding measures to address as far as possible the problems raised by these elements. The EPA also provides for a number of trade measures that Botswana can use as a “safety valve” in the event of serious difficulties caused to its economic sectors by trade liberalisation under the EPA. These include safeguard measures under multilateral trade rules (WTO) or measures in the areas of agriculture, food security and infant industry protection, as well as a special transitional mechanism for Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho and Namibia (BELN). For up-to-date information, see: EU trade agreements with Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries An Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) is a type of free trade agreement for relations with developing countries. The Guide to Exports to the United Kingdom under the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the Member States of the Southern African Customs Union and Mozambique, of the one part, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of the other part (the “SACUM-UK EPA”), is part of the work of International Economics Consulting with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Ministry of Investment – Trade and Industry (MITI) of Botswana.
The guide consists of two main sections. The first section aims to demystify the rules contained in the various provisions, spread over 2,560 pages of the agreement, regarding digestibility by exporters and to highlight potential untapped opportunities in the UK private sector market in Botswana. The second section sets out the requirements and sources of information for carrying out potential exports of products to the UK market. These documents contain information from meetings held within the framework of the UK-SACUM-EPO. You can access your digital copy of this week`s newspaper here. The guide was created to give impetus to Botswana`s trade promotion initiatives by improving the business community`s understanding of business opportunities through the SACUM-UK EPA. Although the guide has not been able to cover all potentially traded products, it provides a methodological approach in manageable steps so that trade managers and private sectors can replicate the assessment of trade potential and access to reliable sources of information to strengthen their readiness for export to the UK market under the SACUM-UK EPA. On this page, you will learn what you need to do from January 1, 2021. It is updated when something changes. The UK has left the EU and the post-Brexit transition period ends this year. Botswana`s exports to the UK remain minimal despite duty-free access to the UK market, formerly the SADC-EU EPA and currently the SACUM-UK Free Trade Agreement. The UK is Botswana`s 16th largest export market, accounting for 0.4% of Botswana`s total exports (by value) in 2019.
Botswana and the United Kingdom have seen a decline in bilateral trade over the past 10 years, with Botswana`s exports falling to just $5.5 million in 2020. Botswana`s export basket to the UK consists mainly of diamonds and a small proportion of machinery, precision instruments, wood, base metals and animal production. The UK, on the other hand, has a more diversified export basket to Botswana. In addition to non-industrial diamonds re-exported from the UK to Botswana for further processing, the other products in the UK basket include machinery, vehicles, chemicals, cardboard, etc. In the UK market, in addition to gemstones, there appears to be untapped potential for Botswana`s exports. The analysis of export potential shows that export potential exists, inter alia, for light industry as well as for clothing and textiles. Decisions and other documents resulting from the meetings of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) of the Member States of the United Kingdom and the Southern African Customs Union (SACUM). The stories sponsored by The Mail & Guardian are produced in collaboration with paid partners. If you would like to speak to our team about producing and publishing high-quality content on our website, please contact us at this email address. Like the EU-SADC EPA, the UK-SACUM-EPA rules of origin support further regional integration by allowing full cumulation rules, i.e. under certain conditions, non-originating materials can be considered as originating products if they are used in the manufacture of another product.
In addition to the most commonly used bilateral cumulation in the context of free trade agreements, the UK-SACUM EPA also allows regional cumulation (cumulation between materials originating in two or more EPA Member States), diagonal cumulation (cumulation of materials originating in other ACP EPA countries or an overseas country or territory of the United Kingdom (OCT)), cumulation with materials and EU processing, and full cumulation Cumulation (cumulation of non-originating most-favoured-nation or other-free materials) B. Duty-free preferential duty-free access to the United Kingdom). .