4 December 2007
Maputo — Informal traders are complaining that, despite the introduction of the SADC (Southern African Development Community) Free Trade Area a from 1 January, onions, potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes and garlic produced in South Africa are still paying import duties of 20 per cent when they enter Mozambique.
"This means that regional integration has still not begun", complained the Association of Informal Sectors Importers and Vendors (Mukhero). The Association's chairperson, Sudecar Novela, said he did not know why these five goods have been excluded from the tariff reduction programme. He claimed they had been removed from the list of goods that were to be zero-rated in terms of customs duties.
But the director of international relations in the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Cerina Mussa, told AIM that there had never been any plan to liberalise tariffs for these five goods in 2008. They could not have been taken off the list, because they were never on it.
Right from the start onions, potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage and garlic had been considered "sensitive goods", which would not be immediately covered by the free trade area. Mussa said that Mozambican farmers had requested that tariffs remain on these goods until 2015, when imported from South Africa, and up to 2012 when imported from other SADC members.
"This was a request made when the Mozambican government was drawing up its offer", she said. The informal traders must have misunderstood "since these products were never to be liberalized in 2008".
The final deal did not meet all the farmers' demands. Mussa said that while potatoes and onions from South Africa will only enter free of duty in 2015, from other SADC countries they are already zero rated. For garlic liberalization with other SADC countries will happen in 2012 and with South Africa in 2015.
The 7,000 members of the Mukhero association, however, only import goods from South Africa, and are not interested in theoretically cheaper imports from further away.
Despite his disappointment with regard to South African potatoes and onions, Novela gave a guarded welcome to the Free Trade Area. Regional integration, he believed, would result in greater competition, "which means quality and price. We will have to learn to display our goods so as to attract clients, and we will know what kind of prices we will have to charge".
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