All is set for commercially meaningful trading in goods under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement to commence.
AfCFTA Secretary-General, Wamkele Mene disclosed this in Accra at a meeting with media owners, CEOs, managers and senior editors and added that the e-tariff book and the rules of origin manual are already on the AfCFTA website to be used by the continent to trade under the continental trading agreement.
“We have now been able to negotiate almost 90%, in fact I think its 88.8% convergence on rules of origin. So over these 5000 products that we trade in Africa, we now have agreement close to 90%.
He explained that the AfCFTA Secretariat will be leading a guided trade among some countries which have demonstrated their readiness to trade under the AfCFTA.
H.E. Wamkele Mene explained that with about 40 different currencies in circulation on the continent, so far about 35 banks have signed on to the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) which is a cross-border, financial infrastructure enabling payment transactions across Africa.
He announced that AfCFTA has secured $9 billion made up of $7 billion from Equity Bank and $2 billion from World Food Programme (WFP) and African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank) to support areas such as value addition, agriculture (food production), minerals among others.
The AfCFTA Boss added that the money will be disbursed to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) which are the pillars for implementation to boost private sector productivity.
The AfCFTA Secretary-General announced plans to raise $10 billion adjustment fund to help member countries develop industrial capacity. Out of this amount, he said AfCFTA has raised $1 billion from the Afreximbank explaining that private companies that desire to access the fund will have to apply through their respective governments.
“There are countries that simply don’t have any export capacity, so the big question is, how do we help those countries? That’s why we went to Afreximbank and we said we want to raise up to 10billion dollars for an AfCFTA Adjustment Fund and we’ve raised about 1billion dollars so far.”
His Excellency Wamkele Mene acknowledged that the continent face infrastructure challenges, particularly road infrastructure bottlenecks which require urgent attention.
