The Government of the Republic of Seychelles has today signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Trade Centre (ITC), which will kick start the“the African Trade Observatory (ATO)” project in Seychelles.
Vice President, Mr. Ahmed Afif, signed the document on behalf of the Republic of Seychelles and the Director- Division of Programme Support, Mr. Gerard Lynch signed for the International Trade Centre.
The ATO is a system that aims to create a continent-wide trade information portal to facilitate intra-African trade. It also will help to monitor the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and boost intra-Africa trade by connecting interested traders within the continent. The System will seek to collect trade-related data from member states and provide trade intelligence to both government and private sectors. With the establishment of such collaboration, it is expected that it will considerably enhance the coverage, quality and availability of real time trade data for all African countries including Seychelles.
Data made available through the ATO will include:
• Merchandise trade flows at the most detailed level including rates of utilisation of intra-Africa tariff preferences;
• Customs duties (applied, preferential and bound rates);
• Rules of Origin of intra-regional preferential rates at the product level;
• Non-tariff measures (NTMs) including information on various market regulations;
• Trade remedies taken by countries;
• Internal taxes including VAT, excise tax and others;
• Commodity prices and exchange rate indicators;
• Company information, trade finance providers and mandatory domestic trade procedures;
• Trade-related performance indicators including growth rates, market shares, market concentrations and regional trade integration indexes.
Furthermore, the ATO also provides a gateway for the private sector to gain access to the African market by connecting buyers and sellers, through a structured network which also provides them with the necessary market access information, such as applicable taxes and standards and market prices.
The MoU provides the framework for the automatic trade information exchange between countries’ Customs systems and the ATO, and also serves as the mechanism which will also protect the sensitivity of the data being exchanged.
To note, it was in mid-June that the National Assembly voted to ratify Seychelles’ membership to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), in which ATO is an important tool complimenting the expected benefits for Seychelles to be derived from the Agreement.
Source: Ministry of Finance, Trade and Blue Economy