Last week, Rosa Whitaker, the Ugandan Government's American consultant on benefiting from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), disclosed some encouraging news.

A new bill is before the US Congress seeking to extend trade concessions for selected African countries involved in the exports of textiles/garments to the US.

Originally, the US only gave these countries up to 2005 to enjoy the duty/quota-free protection under AGOA. The proposed changes seek to push this peroid to 2015.

Central to this proposal is that many investors say it is pointless to start up a textiles enterprise only to see the benefits under AGOA being phased out soon after the business gets going.

African countries should lobby for this extension in an organised manner if it is to gain Congressional sympathy.

Especially since under the terms of the World Trade Organisation all such quota protection for textiles/garments must be abolished by 2005.

A huge chunk of China's trade surplus with the US is composed of garment exports. The US, EU and Japan agree that no one can beat the Chinese in terms of cost and productivity in this business.

If Africans are to get even a small foothold, we must co-ordinate our efforts and present a unified voice.

By the way, little Lesotho already employs 40 times more people in the garment export business than Uganda and earns 100 times more.

Latest AGOA Trade Data on AGOA.info

Click here to view a sector profile of Uganda’s bilateral trade with the United States, disaggregated into total exports and imports, AGOA exports and GSP exports.

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