SOUTH AFRICA should consider joining the free trade agreement between New Zealand, Singapore, Chile and Brunei, in the view Dr Ron Sandrey, a professor at Stellenbosch University who works with the Trade Law Centre for Southern Africa. He sees huge synergies with an efficient Asian economy like Singapore, which poses less of a direct threat – in terms of competition in manufacturing such as clothing or footwear – than does China or India. “Singapore is not a low-wage structure country, and so the clothing sector [in South Africa], for example, would not be under threat,” he told BuaNews. “A modern FTA,” he says, “is about much more than merchandise trade as it should concentrate on numerous issues such as services and investment cooperation, for example.”
