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Kenya : Textile Industry In Trouble As WTO Eliminates Quotas |
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2003-9-18
The Afro-American trade in textile and apparels products may soon loose its robustness, thanks to international trade agreements signed under the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
According to WTO rules, all member countries, including the US, must eliminate global textile quotas by 2005. Its coming into effect is expected to see earnings from the sector come down tumbling as African exporters lose competitive advantage they currently have in the lucrative US market under Africa’s Growth and opportunity Act (AGOA).That, however, is not all that there is to fear. By October 2004, use of third country fabrics in the manufacture of export products, allowed under AGOA,
comes to a close.
Industry players are concerned that in the absence of its extension, Kenya’s EPZ firms will be crippled by acute shortage of raw materials given scarcity of the same in the domestic market.They are appealing to the Government to lobby for continued use of the third country fabrics as it resuscitates the ailing domestic cotton and ginning industries.
The industry is also urging the Government to lobby against the
impending global phase out of textile quotas under the WTO. Kenya has endorsed the WTO framework, which seeks to eliminate non-tariff barriers to trade in manufactured products.
By 2005, textile products will come under WTO rules, which provide for replacement of quotas with tariffs in a bid to bring to an end preferential arrangements made under bilateral agreements such as AGOA.
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