Cameroon: ACP-EU free trade accord - experts say Gov’t is on wrong track
The Post (Buea) | 7 March 2008
Cameroon: ACP-EU Free Trade Accord - Experts Say Gov’t is On Wrong Track
Joe Dinga Pefok
Economic experts have said Government has derailed in the ongoing negotiation on the Economic Partnership Agreement, EPA, with the European Union, EU Commission.
The negotiation is supposed to be within the context of the Cotonou Accord, which was signed in 2000 between 77 African, Caribbean and Pacific, ACP countries, and the EU.
In an interview granted The Post by the Programme Director of Global Trade and Regional Integration at the Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden, Dr. Hodu Ngangjoh Yenkong, said according to the terms of the Cotonou Accord, to which Cameroon is a signatory, the conclusion of the EPA negotiations were supposed to be between the EU Commission, and six economic sub regions of ACP countries. These include among others ECOWAS, SADC, ESA as well as CEMAC.
Dr Yenkong explained: "As a first step, the Cotonou Partnership Agreement called for capacity building and proper integration within the ACP regions and sub regions, before opening up their borders to imports from the EU."
He said the purpose of the trade provisions of the Cotonou Accord was to enter into the World Trade Organisation, WTO, a compatible development-friendly Economic Partnership Agreement by the end of 2007.
Dr Yenkong noted that towards the deadline of December 31, 2007, there were still major divergences on the critical issues, which were supposed to be the very basis of EPAs.
"There were disagreements between the 77 ACP countries and the EU, on the meaning of development and the nature of the agreement needed," he noted.
He said the EPAs are to introduce reciprocal trade liberalisation, which would open up Cameroon and the other ACP countries to increased levels of subsidised imports from the EU.
Yenkong argued further that the differences in opinion on core issues, which arose between the ACP countries and the EU in the negotiations, were supposed to guide the negotiation between the two sides.
But he regretted that rather than face frank discussions with the six ACP sub-regional groupings over the said disagreements that erupted, the EU Commission had instead gone out of the original spirit of the Cotonou Accord to mount undue pressure on Cameroon and other ACP countries, with the intention of coercing them to sign the agreements of which they were not yet prepared for.
According to Yenkong, towards the deadline of December 31, 2007, most ACP countries requested that the negotiations be extended for at least two years but the EU Commission rejected the request.
Missed Opportunity
Yenkong expressed the conviction that the December 2007 EU-Africa Summit, which held in Lisbon, Portugal, was a missed opportunity by the two sides to clinch the above differences in their negotiations.
He regretted that the negotiation on the Economic Partnership Agreements between ACP countries and the EU was not introduced as top issue on the agenda of the summit by the organisers.
"Consequently, the Summit wrapped up without achieving any clear answer to this issue," said Yenkong. It would be recalled that in late December 2007, the Cameroon Government in a controversial decision, led the country out of the CEMAC group, by going solo and signed an interim economic partnership agreement with the EU Commission.
This decision was taken against appeals of the National Syndicate of Cameroon Industrialists, SYNDUSTRICAM, as well as resistance from the organisation of big businesses in Cameroon, GICAM.
On the other hand, Association des Producteurs de Bananes du Cameroun, ASSOBACAM, sources revealed, pushed Government to jump into a bilateral agreement with the EU Commission. Many observers interpreted the move to mean that Government sacrificed the young industrial sector of the country to protect the interest of banana producers, most of which are owned by Western countries.
The Minister of Commerce, Luc Magloire Atangana Mebara, had said EPA would bring sustainable development and poverty reduction to Cameroon. He noted that if Cameroon did not sign the agreement with the EU, FCFA 34,634,400,000 would be paid annually as customs duty, for the 300,000 tons of bananas exported annually to member countries of the EU.
But an economic expert, Maximin Emagna, disclosed that Cameroon will lose at least FCFA 100 billion annually when the EPA accord with the EU goes into effective operation as many goods or products originating from EU member countries will enter the country duty-free.
This further raised the question on the rationale of the Government entering into an arrangement whereby banana exporters will save FCFA 34.6 billion, but the State will lose FCFA 100 billion of customs revenue.
Meanwhile, the Executive Secretary of GICAM, Martin Abega, expressed fears that Government will try to make up for the loss of customs revenue by imposing more taxes on other economic sectors in the country.
Interim Goods-Only EPAs
Dr Yenkong regretted that the EU Commission had ignored CEMAC and initiated an interim goods-only Economic Partnership Agreement with Cameroon and 34 of the 77 member countries of the ACP that had signed the Cotonou Accord.
He stressed that if most of these problems are not resolved before the signing of the full EPAs, the eventual trade deal would be in danger of running incongruently with other key development commitments that the European Union has made since 2000.
