LUSAKA, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) on Tuesday welcomed South Africa's move to ratify a free trade agreement involving three African regional blocs.
The Tripartite Free Trade Area was launched in December 2014 and COMESA, the East African Community (EAC), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
COMESA Secretary-General Chileshe Kapwepwe said the South African government sent a notification on its decision to ratify the agreement, bringing the number of countries to do so to four, after Egypt, Uganda and Kenya.
"This is excellent news. This development moves the tripartite process to near operationalization," she said in a statement released by the regional bloc.
She said the process of ratification has been set in motion in a number of member states and it is expected that the target will be reached by the end of April 2019, which was the deadline set by tripartite members.
According to her, following South Africa's ratification, 10 more ratifications are needed for the agreement to enter into force.
COMESA's Director of Trade and Customs Francis Mangeni said the development buoys the expectations around the tripartite free trade area agreement, which groups 29 of the 55 countries negotiating the African Continental Free Trade Area.
He said in the statement that all the annexes to the tripartite free trade area agreement have been concluded, adding that once the threshold for minimum number of ratification is achieved, the implementation of the agreement will start immediately.
According to Mangeni, negotiations on the tripartite rules of origin have advanced, adding that from a total of 5,387 tariff lines, rules of origins have now been developed for 3,267 tariff lines, representing 60.8 percent of all the tariff lines.
"A number of tripartite instruments have also been developed and are now ready for use. The tripartite guidelines on implementation of trade remedies are ready for use and so are certificates of origin, export declaration and import declaration forms among others," he said.
