Zambia treads cautiously on EPA negotiations

The Zambian government said it was taking the negotiations for the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the European Union (EU) with caution so that the country could have an all-inclusive deal with the European community, the Times of Zambia reported on Tuesday.

Commerce, Trade and Industry Director in charge of industry Tobias Mulimbika said, like other African countries, Zambia was finding it difficult to sign the EPAs before fully industrializing the economy and ensuring that it gets full benefits from the agreement.

"We are taking the EPA negotiations very cautiously of course as a community there is a deadline to have a certain number of countries to conclude their negotiation with the European Union and that deadline is June 30, 2015," he was quoted as saying by the paper.

"Zambia is still at that level where it is taking it cautiously. We want to have a more comprehensive negotiation with them so that we can also benefit in the sense that they should open up their market to export our goods and services to them," he added.

Zambia, he said, would like to have a more comprehensive negotiation with the European community for it to benefit from trade and technological transfer.

The negotiations of the EPAs started in 2000 and were supposed to conclude in 2008 but they have dragged on because of contentious issues.

The EPAs are trade and development agreements negotiated between the EU and the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) regions aimed at creating a free trade area between the two regions. They are a response to continuing criticism that the non-reciprocal and discriminating preferential trade agreements offered by the EU are incompatible with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. Endi