This training is part of an UNCTAD comprehensive capacity building programme to strengthen Mozambique’s trade policy frameworks, focusing on trade safeguards and trade remedies. Implemented in partnership with UNIDO and the Mozambican Ministry of Industry and Trade (MIC), the programme is funded by EU in the context the SADC- EU Partnership Agreement (EPA) to promote trade and export competitiveness in the SADC region. This 3rd workshop will build on the training series of the type organized by UNCTAD in Mozambique in 2021 and in September 2022 with the aim of deepening Mozambican officials’ legal and technical knowledge and expertise related to the use of safeguard measures, in conformity with the WTO and EPA relevant disciplines.
In view of the increasing importance of trade policy instruments in particular trade remedies in regional and global trade, Mozambique, has been at disadvantage in particular in the event of harmful trade practices, like a sudden and unusual import surge that could cause injury to domestic industry, as well as in case of trade disputes, because the required legal system and institutional setup to enforce trade remedies provisions, i.e. Antidumping, subsidies and countervailing measures, and safeguards, is yet to be put in place.
Furthermore, the Guidelines on Trade Remedies and Safeguards, published few weeks ago by the Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), are expected to form an integral part of the AfCFTA Agreement, and thus will bind African governments in the implementation of all regional and multilateral trade remedies and safeguard measures. Hence, UNCTAD support in this field would enable Mozambique to establish the lacking safeguards regime and to build the related human and institutional capacity.
