Key points • Services affect growth and development through various pathways, but services development and trade in services are being affected by a number of constraints. • Although the five SSA RECs covered on paper seem to be...
moreKey points
• Services affect growth and development through various pathways, but services development and trade in services are being affected by a number of constraints.
• Although the five SSA RECs covered on paper seem to be committed to continue to strive towards a further deepening of their regional integration in services, investment and migration there are mixed results which extend to actual implementation of the provisions in the trade related protocols.
• Given the limited relevance of multilateral services fora for Africa at present, there is a rationale to provide with the AUC with a mandate and resources to coordinate the regional integration approach to remove these barriers to services trade.
A paper by Kingombe(2012) examines the importance of regional trade in services for Africa. The infrastructure and network services of business, construction, telecommunications, finance, transport and energy are embedded in all parts and sectors of the economy and affect growth development through four (direct and indirect) pathways.
The literature review shows that trade openness is a key channel for improving services performance. For example, available statistics show that the progress made so far in regional integration by the COMESA show that since the beginning of the FTA in 2000, trade in services in rose from $24.2 billion in 1997 to US$51.4 billion in 2007 (Mburu, 2011).
Despite the fact that there is still room for further methodological work as well as tools for improving statistics on trade in services existing data suggests that services contributed relatively more to growth, which is crucial for poverty reduction. Trade in services is an important export sector for some countries in SSA, such as Cape Verde (76%), Mauritius (75%) and the Seychelles (88%), where services exports made up more than two-third of GDP in 2009.
Given the limited relevance of multilateral services fora for Africa and that the ACP-EU African EPAs negotiations primarily are driven by EU interests, there is some rationale for a continental African regional approach to remove these barriers to services trade.
