Agoa reviews eligible African countries

Alan Peat
THE ANNUAL look at
the 35 African countries eligible under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) for duty-free access of imports to the US is currently under way, according to information released to FTW by Riaan de Lange, head of the international trade division at Deloitte & Touche.
Also on the table for its annual review is the list of the 14 states which are still ineligible.
The status of each country is judged against the criteria set out in Section 104 of the AGOA and Section 502 of the Trade Act.
At the same time, the US authorities have dropped the previous annual examination of general sales preference (GSP) for the AGOA countries. These now have the GSP items incorporated into AGOA until September 2008.