Other Initiatives and Trade Arrangements

  • contact
  • Other Initiatives and Trade Arrangements

Other Initiatives and Trade Arrangements

Duty Free Quota Free Market Access

The Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration provides a commitment on developed countries and developing countries in a position to do so to grant Least Developed Countries (LDCs) duty free and quota free (DFQF) market access for products originating from all LDCs. Based on this, a number of developing countries announced preferential market access treatment for products originating from LDCs. These include India, Brazil, South and China. Developed countries offering DFQF include Canada, Australia and Japan. The United States has crafted the African Growth Opportunities Act for select African countries and the EU crafted the Everything But Arms Initiative, (EBA).

 African Growth and Opportunity Act

The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), is a unilateral initiative of the United States Government to grant Sub-Saharan African countries duty-free and quota-free market access on select products. The Act offers tangible incentives for African countries to continue their efforts to open their economies and build free markets. In total, 37 African countries from Nigeria to Lesotho have access to the US market under the AGOA, Zambia being one such beneficiary.

AGOA Eligible Products

Virtually all products (over 6,500) are eligible to enter the USA market under AGOA. Africa’s exports under AGOA have mainly been textiles and garments, agricultural products, automobiles, oil and handicrafts. Zambia’s export figures to the USA under AGOA including the General System of Preferences (GSP) provisions of the AGOA Act have continued to rise for the past six years. Zambia’s competitive advantage to trade under the AGOA initiative lies in the export of floricultural and horticultural products such as cut flowers and high value vegetables like mange tout, baby corn, asparagus, carrots, Zambia has, apart from cut flowers, five vegetables that are eligible to be exported to the USA under AGOA. These are snow peas, fine beans, courgettes, baby carrots and baby corn.