The Secretary of State for Foreign Commerce, Alexandre Costa, said Monday in Luanda that the Government has set a strategy to address the crisis with focus on the diversification of the economy and exports, choosing the integration and access to regional markets.

The official said so at the opening of the seminar on International Trade, stressing that accessing to regional markets entails hard negotiations with the partners of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

According to him, the intention is to achieve the goals set on trade liberalisation and therefore the removal of tariff.

The official spoke of the need to better master the art of negotiating, make use, not only of the tools and techniques of negotiation, but above all to master the rules of the game in order to get better results.

He added that the current phenomenon of globalisation has been triggering a number of reactions in terms of the strategic economy and trade position of the countries.

The Secretary of State also said that all regions of the world report a resurgence of protectionist tendencies characterised, on the one hand, by the proliferation of regional trade agreements and, above all, regional mega-agreements between major players in international trade, such as the European Union and the United States.

The official also referred to the existence of a new dynamic in Africa relating to the implementation of pan-African ideas aimed at regional integration in the different regional economic configurations recognised by the African Union.

All these efforts, he added, are aimed to create necessary conditions to ensure the implementation of a Free Trade Area Continent, in accordance with the decisions of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union adopted in Summit held in 2015, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Alexandre Costa said that Angola has been following with particular interest this dynamics.

The country’s participation in regional integration efforts is in line with the National Strategy, under the National Development Plan for 2013-2017.

The seminar on International Trade was organised by the national secretariat of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and funded by the European Union.

Source: Angop