The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic), in collaboration with the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa, will on Thursday host a consultative workshop on non-tariff and technical barriers to trade faced by South African firms across Africa.
Trade, Industry and Competition Deputy Minister, Fikile Majola, will address the workshop, which will take place at the dtic campus in Sunnyside, Pretoria.
The workshop is a response to concerns raised by the private sector. It will be used as a platform to identify possible solutions to the barriers faced by the companies, and to define concrete actions that can be jointly implemented through a collaborative effort between the public and private sector within South Africa and beyond the borders.
Common non-tariff barriers across Africa include cumbersome customs operations and border documentation, pre-shipment inspections, transport regulations, sanitary and phytosanitary measures and technical barriers to trade, amongst others.
This is due to the fact that the elimination of non-tariff barriers is critical to increasing intra-Africa trade and to achieving the objectives of realising a single market under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). – SAnews.gov.za
