IN PURSUIT OF A COMMON MARKET (ANALYSIS)

Pretoria, February 17- SA’s acceptance into the Bric (Brazil, Russia, India, China ) club of influential emerging economies is now widely accepted as a diplomatic coup on the part of President Jacob Zuma , regardless of whether we "deserve" to be in such august company. SA may be an economic minnow by comparison with the other members of the new Brics grouping, but we are the dominant economy on the world’s fastest-growing and least exploited continent, and when you take the long view, the potential value in that is worth more than the sum of its parts.

That’s not to say we can rest on our laurels, confident that the world will keep knocking on our door for access to Africa no matter what policy choices we make. A country such as Nigeria has the population and entrepreneurial dynamism to eclipse SA in the economic stakes if it could only get its act together politically, while Angola and other underdeveloped but resource-rich states are already attracting more foreign direct investment. And as recent developments in Egypt have shown, there’s always something new out of Africa. Sophisticated economies that have been moribund for decades through misrule could take over the leadership role on the continent in a blink of an eye if we stand still while they forge ahead.

For SA to take full advantage of its newfound status as a Brics member, we need to seize the initiative and help deliver the stable, investor-friendly, rapidly growing and economically integrated common African market that might ensure the continent lives up to its potential as the Asia of the 21st century.

The European Union (EU) may seem an unlikely choice of role model given its sovereign debt problems and doubts over the future of the euro. But the challenges facing the EU are more about poor policy implementation than principle. While monetary union may have been misguided and political union a pipe dream, the single European market was a stroke of genius that contributed significantly to the growth of the region over the past two decades.

Africa now has the opportunity to follow a similar path towards economic integration while avoiding the ideological and bureaucratic traps the EU has fallen into. Fortunately, since the obstacles to forming a single currency and finding common ground politically remain so high in Africa, there is low-hanging fruit in the area of trade that can be picked without the continent painting itself into a corner.

This takes the form of efforts to unify the three major existing regional economic blocs to create a combined free trade area stretching from Cape to Cairo and a potential market of up to 700- million people. Representatives of the Southern African Development Community, East African Community, and Common Market of East and Southern Africa meet in SA next month for their second summit meeting, well aware that the potential to boost economic growth by linking cross- border communications and transport infrastructure and allowing duty-free passage of goods and transfer of skills is huge.

A continent-wide free trade area will not happen overnight, especially since the structural, nontariff barriers to trade are daunting in many areas. But establishing trade rules and harmonising tariffs and standards will happen only by negotiation, so a summit is the right way to get the ball rolling.

Adding to the urgency is the apparent weakness of the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu), whose members -SA, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland- are in the midst of a divisive review of their customs revenue-sharing agreement. The sooner a new arrangement can be found to replace the outdated Sacu concept the better for SA and its immediate neighbours.

<