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Swaziland: Not Much Changes in AGOA Extension

Published date:
Thursday, 01 February 2007

The chairman of the Swaziland Textile Association David Hsia has stated that the extension of the AGOA provision to 2012 will not come with dramatic changes in terms of production costs in the local textile industry.

The provision states that the United States of America (USA) Congress had approved the extension of the Third Country Fabric provision of the African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) to 2012. In essence, this means countries like Swaziland would have to source raw material locally in terms of textile products.

In an interview with the chairman, he explained that the provision would have one major benefit to the country.

“We will be able to meet our deadline in terms of production time. Currently we source raw material from Mainland China and it takes about a month for it to get to Swaziland. If we get the material locally, we will not have to wait for a whole month for delivery and this is an advantage to the industry,” he explained.

Hsia said production costs would not change much, especially because the material bought from China was very cheap. He said this was because the Chinese government subsidised textile exporters by 13 percent of the total costs, something that was not done in Swaziland.

“Even if the product can be 100 percent made in Swaziland, production costs would not be reduced that much as there are exportation costs that are not subsidised by the government,” stated the chairman.

When asked how soon they would be ready to source raw material locally, the chairman stated that he was optimistic that in the next six months they would be doing so.

“It’s all about the spinning, knitting and dying that is currently sourced overseas but not the agricultural aspect of it such as cotton,” explained Hsia.



“ Latest AGOA Trade Data currently available on AGOA.info


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


Other regularly updated trade statistics on AGOA.info include: (click each link to view)

  • AGOA-Beneficiary Countries’ AGOA and GSP Trade Aggregates

  • AGOA Trade by Industry Sector

  • Apparel Trade under AGOA’s Wearing Apparel Provisions

  • Latest Apparel Quotas under AGOA

  • Bilateral Trade Data for all AGOA-eligible countries individually.

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