Government not in position to report on Cotonou...

The Deputy Minister for Industries, Trade and Marketing, Hezekiah Chibulunje

The government has declared that it is not ready to give progress report on conciliation on Cotonou Agreement.

The Deputy Minister for Industries, Trade and Marketing, Hezekiah Chibulunje told the House here yesterday that the Cotonou Agreement negotiations were still on and there was no progress report on the talks that could be revealed to Members of Parliament at the moment.

He was responding to a question by Hamza Abdallah
Mwenegoha (Morogoro South, CCM) who had wanted to know the progress of negotiations and whether its results could be open to the MPs or members of the public.

`Honorable Deputy Speaker, the Cotonou Agreement involves Economic Partnership Agreement (EPAs) which are going on between African countries, Caribbean and Pacific ACP and the European Union, but we cannot give the progress report know,` he said when answering an additional question from Dr. Wilbrod Slaa (Karatu, Chadema) who had insisted to know which stage the discussion reached.

However, Chibulunje said that in the discussion, ACP and EU the Parliament was represented Kilontsi Mporogomyi (Kasulu West, CCM).

He said that in the fourth stage discussions which took place in Maputo Mozambique, Mporogomyi attended and witnessed the entire progress on the discussion.

He said that the MP had several times been attending the negotiation meetings between SADC-EPA and EU in Brussels, Belgium.

He said that the government would continue to inform the Assembly on the negotiations proceeding so that the MPs could understand better and therefore disseminate the information to the public.

In March this year The Guardian reported that the
National Chairperson of the Network of Farmers` Group, Daima Mhina, said that more time should be given to stakeholders to discuss the agreement before the government could signs it.

She said was addressing participants at the
East and Southern Africa Farmers` forum in a training session in Morogoro.

She said that government leaders needed enough time before they signed the agreement because they have to educate farmers and other stakeholders on the benefits and deficits of the EPAs.

She said that it was observed from the seminar participants that opening markets for ACP products would only benefit big businessmen and European countries leaving developing nations in fragile state.

The response comes while farmers and activists demand that the negotiations pertaining to joining the new European Union sponsored by EPAs be extended in order to provide opportunities for farmers and other stakeholders to digest their implication on the domestic economic scene.

The Cotonou Agreement was signed, after 18 months of negotiation, on June 23, 2000 by the European Union and 77 Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states.

This Agreement governs all relations between the ACP countries and the European Union.

The EPAs fall under the trade component of the Cotonou Agreement.

In compliance with the Agreement, they must be signed in 2008 between the European Union and the ACP countries grouped in regional blocks.

Their implementation must be spread over a 12-year transitional period, from 2008 to 2020.