Deepening Integration in SADC - Fes-botswana.org

infrastructure will improve, the workforce become more skilled, and
industrialists acquire the knowledge and capacity to export
competitively. At the same time, industries are still protected (DTIS,
2004).
Putting aside the complexities of Rules of Origin and other nontariff
measures, a poor country such as Mozambique participating in a
regional trade arrangement must ensure that regional preferences
agree with MFN-based tariffs. It must also promote domestic market
reform (DTIS, 2004).
If Mozambique ignores current and future changes to regional or
international trade arrangements, it may lose market access. To avoid
this, there is a need to acquire substantial new resources for policy
analysis and impact modelling.
Finally, but not least, the weakness of tax policy in Mozambique as
well as in other member states affects also the macroeconomic
performance and the process of SADC integration. If the SADC
countries can find common ways of conducting trade with themselves
and with all their trade partners, this will start to counter the advantage
of developed countries, and will improve their terms of trade with all
partners. Part of this will be creating good common data on trade as
well as trade policy.
6.8 How Membership in SADC Influences Macroeconomic
Polices
A
general feature of the sequencing of trade liberalisation in
Mozambique initiated in 1997 is that financial and other support
measures to its few exporting companies were not introduced either
before or during early stages of trade liberalisation.
Some trade economists (such as Rodrik, 1990 and Edward, (1997)
argue that macroeconomic stabilisation should come before structural
reforms. This is because macroeconomic instability is often one of the
most important causes of policy reversal (Edward, 1992). In practice,
however, the stabilisation process, usually overlap structural reforms.
With regard to the design of trade liberalisation, which is part of the
process of structural reforms, Edward (1977) has summarised the best
sequencing on the basis of experience as follows:
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