He was speaking during a press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters, Maison Quéau de Quinssy, Mont Fleuri, after attending the 2nd Tripartite Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Also present at the press conference was another delegate, Melanie Stravens, director general for trade from the Ministry of Finance and Trade.

The delegation who attended this summit was led by Vice-President Danny Faure.

The resident high commissioner to Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa), Joseph Nourrice, also formed part of the Seychelles delegation, along with other technical staff from the Ministry of Finance and Trade and that of Foreign Affairs.

Mr Adam said “we are well on track to move towards setting up this Tripartite Free Trade Area (T-FTA) which will effectively be the largest free trade area in the world.”

“There will be 26 member countries from three Regional Economic Communities (RECs) – Comesa, the SADC and the East African Community (EAC).”

He said the T-FTA negotiations will create a larger integrated market with a combined Gross Domestic Product of over $625 billion and population of approximately 700 million people.

This will be of great advantages for “our country and businesses as we will no longer market ourselves as 90,000 persons”.
He added that this initiative definitely ease the cost of doing business – reduce costs for importers in Seychelles and facilitate potential exports.

“The FTA will provide a wider market for Seychelles exports and imports, reduce barriers to trade and harmonise regional programmes that will lessen the administrative burden of multiple memberships of regional organisation for Seychelles.”

He said this does not mean that eventhough we have a very much liberalised market we can export and import anything through this regional trade.

“Standards of products are important and this will be ensured by the Seychelles Bureau of Standards.”

He also added that all countries have its sensitive list – that is what products it can or cannot import ¬– and each state has its legislation and this will not change.”

Mr Adam said the meeting also looked at the building of regional infrastructure and Seychelles has stressed that small islands need to benefit more from this as we are not directly part of the continent.

“We do not directly benefit from bridges, railways and electricity networks but our voices and that of other small island states have been heard and we are working with Comesa and SADC on a maritime highway project,” he said.

He said that the first phase of the T-FTA is based on trade and goods and is expected to come into force by 2015.

This T-FTA initiative follows the call of the African Union to accelerate the economic integration of the African continent with the aim of achieving economic growth and reducing poverty.

The first summit was held in 2008 in Kampala, Uganda.  Member states agreed upon a broad base of principles on which a programme of harmonisation of trading arrangements among the three regional groupings – Comesa, the EAC and the SADC would foster cooperation.

These were to deepen integration to compete more effectively in the global economy and to jointly carry out inter-regional infrastructure programmes and institutional arrangements.