African businesses support adoption of “AGOA III”

African businesses support adoption of “AGOA III”

African businesses support adoption of “AGOA III”

   African business officials welcomed President Bush’s recent proposal to extend trade benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act beyond 2008.
   Stephen Hayes, president of the Corporate Council on Africa, said the proposal “gives us a reason to cheer” during the U.S.-Sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum in Washington this week.
   AGOA provides preferential tariff treatment for imports of certain textile and apparel products of beneficiary sub-Saharan African countries.
   “The extension of AGOA — ‘AGOA III’ — will give business the confidence to make long-term investments in African countries,” said Secretary of State Colin Powell to forum attendees.
   In three years since AGOA went into effect, Powell said it is estimated that AGOA-related trade and investment in Africa has created more than 190,000 jobs and $340 million in new investment. During the first three quarters of 2003, AGOA-related trade reached $10.2 billion, a 59-percent increase over the same period last year.
   Powell pointed out that two American companies, for example, have invested in plants in Ghana to export goods to the United States. These plants employee 400 Ghanaians.
   “Zambian cotton exports to South Africa more than doubled in 2002, thanks to increased demand generated by AGOA,” Powell also cited.
   But most African and U.S. businesses agree that AGOA has a long way to go to improve Africa’s economic condition. “In my view, the full benefits of AGOA have yet to be harvested by most African nations and the people of those nations,” Hayes said.