The 20th Brussels Development Briefing will be on 'Financing agriculture' and will take place on the 15th of  September 2010. As an input to the UN Summit on MDGs to be held in New York on 22-26 September 2010, we will discuss issues related  to financing development in the context of agriculture and rural development. This will include issue such as Aid and ODA, taxation (Domestic tax revenues), private investment (new donors), revenue generation. Speakers include: Centre for Environmental Policy at  Imperial College in London, the  Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa in the US, CONCORD, OECD, African Development Bank, Caribbean Development Bank, YARA, African regional framers organizations.

For more information please contact: lopes@cta.int or boto@cta.int

The Ministry of Trade and industry has started a sensitization campaign on Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) in all sectors of economy. The EPAs are wide ranging trade agreements covering goods, services as well as areas of broad economic cooperation between East African Community (EAC) partner states and the European Union (EU).

All members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) should meet the 2012 deadline for the implementation of the Free Trade Areas (FTAs) following a delay in effecting them since their inception in 2008.

Talks have been weighed down by procedural problems and a conclusion still seems far away. The six years of tortuous negotiations over an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the EU and seven (out of 15) Southern African Development Community (SADC) members have been dogged by procedural and substantive wranglings, resulting in only limited progress.

The African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group, which represents 14 Forum Island Countries wants the European Union (EU) to ‘slow down’ on signing interim Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with member countries. Instead, the EU should now focus on a comprehensive EPA with all of the ACP’s six regions – in line with the agreement’s objective to reinforce regional integration.
 

The 20th Brussels Development Briefing will be on ‘Financing agriculture and will take place on the 15th of  September 2010. As an input to the UN Summit on MDGs to be held in New York on 22-26 September 2010, we will discuss issues related  to financing development in the context of agriculture and rural development.

Land is an asset of enormous importance for billions of rural dwellers in the developing world, and especially in ACP countries. The nature of property rights and their degree of security vary greatly, depending on competition for land, the degree of market penetration and the broader institutional and political context.

Will trade liberalisation bear an adjustment cost for ACP countries? If so, how much and who will pay for it? What are the strategies for reducing or even eliminating these costs? These are all sensitive questions facing ACP and European negotiators in the context of the negotiations of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs).

The Secretary General of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP), Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas, who is in Port Vila this week to attend the Pacific ACP leaders meeting said any Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the regions of ACP must be a development tool and not just a commercial agreement.

Total cereal production in 2010 should be close to the average from the last five years. While the yield per hectare will be 5% above average, overall cultivated areas have decreased. This agricultural year has been marked by unusual scattered weather events ranging from severe rain shortage to floods. However, the impact of poor weather on crops in some areas of the EU has been offset in other areas.