/ Cameroon: risks for a postponement of the EPA with the EU (European source)
YAOUNDE, 11 January (Xinhua) – Eleven days after the deadline of 1st January fixed by the time table, no indicator has been given on the coming into force of the interim Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) concluded on 17 December 2007 between Cameroon and the European Union (EU), the Cameroonian government having requested a postponement but a European source in Yaoundé makes mention of risks of this postponement.
“If the postponement is decided, one of the risks for Cameroon is that the European Union be obliged to automatically reestablish the system of generalised preferences (SGP), that is to say Cameroonian products would once more start being subjected to customs taxes and tariffs for access to the European market”, a EU source close to the file in the Cameroonian capital that requested anonymity announced at Xinhua on Monday.
This source admits that “the file is delicate » and recalled the on-going negotiations with the Cameroonian government, which “would permit us to come out of this situation which is not comfortable”. This EPA provides for a dismantling of tariffs between the two parties, linked to their trade. Already since two years, certified products of Cameroonian origin accede to the European market without duty nor quota.
As for products exported from the EU towards Cameroon, the concept of product of origin was not defined, which constituted a justified reason by the Cameroonian Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Louis Paul Motaze, to solicit at the end of 2009 a postponement to a later date the coming into force of the agreement.
The conclusion of a regional agreement linking Central Africa to the European Union is presented as another condition of application of the interim EPA between Cameroon and the European partner.
The negotiations for this regional agreement are in an impasse since February 2009 and in the other countries of the region (Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic and Chad) then within the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC), worries were expressed on this EPA, judged destabilising for the economies of these countries.
A meeting of ministers in charge of this file has been announced for this month in Bangui in the Central African Republic (CAR), in view relaunching these regional negotiations.
Source Web: http://french..news.cn/afrique/2010-01/12/c_13133358.htm#
