According to the South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the extraordinary summit was preceded by meetings of senior officials last week and the Council of Ministers over the past weekend.

The theme of the summit is 'Economic Integration of SADC', focusing on issues on macroeconomic convergences and how best to achieve a Free Trade Area.

SADC is planning a Free Trade Area by 2008, a Customs Union by 2010 and a Common Market by 2015.

The extraordinary summit was necessitated by concerns at the pace at which regional programmes and projects are being implemented.

At the last regional summit of Heads of State and Government in Lesotho in August, the SADC leaders established a taskforce of ministers to make recommendations on what steps member states must take to speed up the decision-making process on the question of overlapping membership and progress towards economic integration.

The taskforce, comprising ministers of finance, economic development, planning, trade and industry from all member states, will present its findings at the extraordinary summit in Midrand, South Africa.

Other issues to be discussed are the multiple memberships by member states of Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and human resources requirements of the SADC Secretariat.

Difficulties caused by overlapping membership of RECs have delayed progress towards meeting regional integration targets.

The bulk of SADC member countries belong to more than one REC, all of which target the creation of a customs union.

World Trade Organisation rules, however, require that a member country should not belong to more than one customs union.

The summit is also expected to consider the modalities for establishing the proposed SADC Regional Development Fund, which will finance development projects based on mobilisation of member states' own resources such as insurance and pension funds as well as other regional funding sources.

Current SADC funding is such that about 61 per cent of the region's programmes and projects are financed by international co-operating partners while the remainder comes from member state contributions.

It was agreed at the summit to improve this scenario and have the bulk of the funding for projects coming from regional sources.

That will ensure commitment by member states to regional programmes and projects.

sardc.net

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