Seychelles has now not only joined the SADC region, but also benefits from the SADC free trade agreement. This means pretty much anything imported from Seychelles can be imported duty-free. This is not a lot however, as we don’t have much trade with Seychelles, but it does open a new market for SA exports at preferential duty rates. The accession is backdated to 1 April 2015, which means that any imports that occurred between then and now, that resulted in duty being paid, would see its duties refunded.

Contrast this to Croatia

Croatia joined the EU in July 2013 and all of the paperwork has been in order for 2 years now, yet SA has not taken any action at all to actually bring Croatia into the EU Trade Development and Cooperation Agreement. To be clear, this is not a lot of work. And whilst Croatia is quite a small trading partner, there is still a significant enough amount of trade between the countries for this to be a noticeable problem. No one in government appears to be willing to either commit to when Croatia will participate in the trade agreement, or provide any reasons for not already including them in the agreement. Right now the the Rand is weak and we should be doing all we can to drive exports into new markets. The TDCA provides exactly such an opportunity, by giving SA duty-free access to the EU member states for most of the things we produce. It would be good to see action taken here, so that Croatia can be added to that list of countries we have preferential access to.