Malawi to formulate Agoa strategy
Malawi Government says it will seek to come up with a strategy to ensure the country fully benefits from the renewal of the Agoa trade agreement between the United States and African countries.
A Malawi delegation led by President Peter Mutharika joined colleagues from some unprecedented 50 African States that accepted US President Barack Obama’s invitation for the Washington summit last month.
And among the summit’s highlights was Africa’s push for the renewal of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) initiative—a trade agreement giving duty-free benefits to billions of selected African States’ exports to the US.
The initiative is aimed at boosting the continent’s trade, but many at home believe Malawi has not fully benefited from the window and speaking in an interview, Minister of Trade Joseph Mwanamveka conceded the country needs to do more.
Mwanamveka, however, revealed that among several lessons the country has learnt from the summit was the need for a clear strategy on how to benefit from the Agoa market.
“At the summit we learnt it’s something our colleagues in the region all had it. (Neighbouring) Tanzania has an Agoa strategy; Ethiopia has a specific strategy as well. So we agree with sentiments that as a country perhaps we have not indeed benefited as much as our colleagues in the region and perhaps this could be the reason. We will come up with our own strategy because we need to maximise on our benefits,” said Mwanamveka.
He said the country is also pushing for the US and investors to help it increase capacity and levels of production and in value adding.
“We are happy however as the renewal was a great achievement of the summit. It will create a market at a time we are struggling as a country to find markets. Additionally, we also realised there are bottlenecks that have hindered us from maximising on the window and during the summit we pushed for further help in developing our capacity and again, the strategy will also help us remove such bottlenecks,” he added.
He said it was important for Lilongwe to share notes with African countries that have successfully benefited from Agoa.
During the summit, African heads of State pushed for Agoa’s renewal for another 15 years, but despite Obama’s administration negotiating the matter with the States, the final say rests with US’s Congress which is due to meet on the matter.
