Beware misleading trade agreement talk!

THERE ARE just too many SA "trade agreements" being reported that don't fit the bill, according to Riaan de Lange, head of the Deloitte & Touche international trade division.
A better definition, he told FTW, would be that they are "agreements to discuss possible trade agreements".
And a lot of them are also industry selective - looking, for example, to come to an agreement on trade in motor vehicles - rather than full-scale trade discussions.
His comments follow a report in the daily press about a "newly struck trade agreement" between SA and Algeria.
But this, it appeared, only applied to a deal which could bring commercial wine-making to Kwa Zulu-Natal.
And it was part of the three-year-old SA-Algeria Bi-national Commission which was established to expand economic ties between the two countries, and has just completed its second session.
"It's not a bi-lateral trade agreement," said De Lange.
"The only countries with which we have these are Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mauritius.
"You can add to that our multi-laterals - with the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the European Union (EU)."
SA also has generalised system of preferences (GSP) agreements with 22 countries - of which the US African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is probably the best-known.
The GSP with the 15 countries of the EU takes second spot while those with Norway, Canada, Hungary, Japan, Switzerland and the Czech Republic make up the rest of the list.
"The significance of these is that they are non-reciprocal trade deals. We have duty-free access to their markets, but not them to ours.
"All these other "trade agreements" we keep reading about, are more for co-operation rather than trade per se."