The Deepening And Expansion Of Sino African Trade Must Be Aware Of The Details Of African Trade Policy.

The deepening and expansion of Sino African trade must be aware of the latest trend of African trade policy, and the analysis is based on its latest trend and taking targeted countermeasures.

Considering that the 2015-2016 year is the key year for many African countries to formulate development plans, the following is a review of the new trend of African countries' trade policy from 2015 to June 2016, and then puts forward corresponding coping strategies.

It is mainly manifested in paying more attention to environmental protection, attaching importance to commodity quality, increasing import cost of manufactured goods, and reducing trade barriers within regional organizations.

Africa is China's fastest growing export destination and trading partner.

In recent years, with the initiatives of the China Africa Cooperation Forum, the trade between China and Africa has been developing rapidly.

In 2000, the volume of trade between China and Africa was only $10 billion, while in 2014 it reached $220 billion, an increase of 22 times.

Although China's trade volume in 2015 was only $179 billion 30 million, down 18.3% from the same year, it was up 3.6% for the non export trend.

In the 2001-2015 years, the average annual growth rate of China Africa trade, China's exports to Africa and China's imports from Africa reached 23%, 23.7% and 23.2% respectively. China has been Africa's largest trading partner for 7 years in a row.

It is expected that the scale of Sino African trade will continue to expand as the African economy continues to grow, the framework of China Africa Cooperation Forum matures and the "ten major cooperation plans" of China Africa become more and more developed.

On the other hand, China Africa trade has only accounted for about 4.5% of China's foreign trade for many years. It is far from the goal set by Premier Li Keqiang to reach US $400 billion in 2020, and it needs to be further deepened and expanded.

We should pay more attention to environmental protection, especially those with relatively better economic development.

For example, in the North African country with relatively better economic development, Morocco, in order to reduce the environmental damage caused by plastic bags, in November 2015, the government of Morocco passed a bill prohibiting the production, sale and import of plastic bags (but not in the three areas of agricultural, industrial and household garbage collection).

In Kenya, the most economically developed country in East Africa, its energy management committee has proposed a carbon emission tax on imported cars with a carbon emission exceeding a certain standard since July 2015. The imported cars will receive a certain amount of refund (now the national pportation and Safety Bureau has set up a testing center to test the carbon emission level of motor vehicles).

In November 2015, the Garner Environmental Protection Agency submitted the three year old Garner electronic waste bill to Parliament. The bill requires manufacturers and importers of electronic products to register at the environmental protection department and pay taxes and fees for recycling and processing of electronic waste.

More attention has been paid to the quality of imported goods and many measures have been adopted.

African countries have increasingly attached importance to the quality of imported goods and have taken many measures to ensure their quality.

In April 2015, the Ministry of Commerce and industry of Zimbabwe issued the cargo certification assessment scheme (CBCA), which stipulates that all goods exported to Tianjin are required to be certified before shipment from May 16th.

In May, the Algeria foreign bank issued new letters of credit for importing enterprises for foreign exchange payment, requiring importers to issue certificates of quality provided by exporters and to be issued by international famous institutions to ensure the quality of goods.

The Morocco National Food Safety Bureau has expanded the field of food safety inspection. Since June 2015, the inspection will not only focus on food and food products sold on the market, but also expand to all aspects of the food industry chain, including import and export food.

In September 2015, the Kenya Bureau of standards announced the introduction of new import standardized labels to combat irregular importers and ensure the quality of imported goods.

In March 2016, the Minister of trade and industry of South Africa said that it would seriously deal with the import of illegal and harmful goods, and those who dumped illegal and unsafe products to the South African market would face legal sanctions.

Increasing import costs of manufactured goods is especially evident in building materials and non essentials.

In Algeria, in order to increase the nationalization rate of building materials used in housing projects from 70% to 85%, the following new policies are proposed in 2016: prohibit the import of construction units from the construction of local housing projects, and the import tariffs of steel products and other products can be substantially increased. The import tariff from non EU countries is increased from 15% to 30%, including rebar, wire rod, steel tube and billet, etc., and the import license management system is implemented for three kinds of products, including automobile, cement and reinforcement.

In the 2015/2016 fiscal year budget, Kenya announced that measures would be taken to increase the import costs of non essential items such as fishnets, gas cans, plastic packaging pipes and food processing to support local companies.

In December 2015, the Ministry of trade and industry of Rwanda said it would increase import taxes on second-hand leather products such as shoes and belts in recent years to reduce imports and promote local development.

The development of industry.

In January 2016, the Lu government said it would lower the import tax on raw materials for leather goods, and increase the import tax on second-hand leather products from 35% to 70% in the past, but increased to 100% after July.

Speed up the process of regional integration and promote intra regional trade facilitation.

All along, due to the barriers to intra regional trade, the geographical structure of Africa's cargo trade is dominated by foreign trade. It is expected that this phenomenon will be greatly changed by 2017.

In June 2015, 26 African countries signed the three party free trade area agreement (TFTA), integrating the three major free trade areas in the African region, the southern African Development Community (SADC), the East African community (EAC) and the eastern and southern African Common Market (COMESA), which will gradually eliminate the barriers to commodity trade between the three major regions and promote intra regional trade, and are expected to start functioning after 2017.

In addition, the SADC Member States originally approved the WTO (WTO) trade facilitation agreement (TFA) protocol before March 31, 2015 to simplify the formalities of customs and pport corridors and documents required by the port. Once the agreement is implemented, the cost of trade between the Eastern Community and other countries can be reduced by about 14.5%. After signing the agreement, it can reasonably predict that the signing of the trade facilitation agreement should not be too far away as the highest regional cooperation organization in Africa.

On the other hand, it is important to note that many of the trade facilitation brought by the trend of integration is only for regional organizations, but not for other countries.

For example, according to the draft budget of the government in the 2015-2016 fiscal year of Rwanda, the government of Lu plans to levy an import duty rate of 1.5% on imported products other than the eastern community.

Reduce barriers to trade in services and reduce related import and export tariffs.

Because of the differences in laws, regulations and policies between African countries, Africa's service industry has not been able to bring its potential into full play for a long time.

According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and development in the "2015 African Economic Development Report", Africa has 15% of the world's population and 2.2% of its output.

African countries have realized the great potential of the service sector, and are now consulting on the free trade in services in Africa to try to solve the problem of trade mismatch between policy and services.

At the African Union summit held in June 2015,

The drafting work has been put on the agenda, and the relevant countries intend to achieve the free circulation of services and commodities among the Contracting States through the agreement. It is expected that the agreement can be signed in 2017. It is expected that the barriers to trade in services between African countries will be reduced, and the relevant import and export tariffs will be reduced, or even in some cases, visa restrictions will be abolished.

Foreign exchange control of commodities exports will increase in the short and medium term, and the fight against tax evasion will also increase.

According to the World Bank report, the decline in commodity prices has led to a 16% decrease in total trade volume in Africa, with the largest loss of foreign trade.

It is predicted that the downturn in the African trade market will lead to a 0.5 percentage point reduction in the economic growth rate. The current account and fiscal balance will be lowered by 4 and 2 percentage points respectively. Sub Saharan African countries will continue to face the dilemma of falling international commodity market prices: lower raw material prices stimulate the US dollar to strengthen, and the currencies of the countries concerned will depreciate because of the strong US dollar, thus stimulating the market's expectation of US interest rate increase. Commodity demand will continue to decline, once again limiting the upward trend of prices, and commodity prices are expected to continue to fall 5 to 10 years.

As a result, Africa's oil exporting countries, such as Nigeria and Angola, will continue to decline in export earnings, while other mineral resources exporting countries such as Garner, South Africa and Zambia are also facing unfavorable situations such as weak commodity prices and severe trade terms. The US dollar liquidity is urgent, and policies will be issued to defend their currencies, impose very strict foreign exchange control, restrict us dollar exchange, and intensify efforts to combat tax evasion.

At present, Africa has 330 million Internet users, and 1/5 of Africans have online shopping experience.

With the development of the economy, the increase of disposable income, the increase of the middle class and the popularity of smart phones, people's demand for shoes, clothes, computers, mobile phones and mobile clients will also soar.

In October 2015, the East African legislative assembly (EALA) adopted the "2014 East Community e-commerce bill". It aims to pave the way for the development of inter regional electronic trading platform by creating a secure and efficient electronic trading environment.

However, there is still a structural gap between supply and demand in this field, and the gap is widening, which brings great opportunities to e-commerce.

Many multinational companies have taken a fancy to this huge market.

Since its establishment in 2012, AfricaInternetGroup, an African subsidiary of German company RocketInternet, has been developing vigorously. One of its platforms, Jumia, is known as "Africa Amazon". It has become the leader of African electric business, and its distribution range even covers the activity area of Boko Haram, which indicates the bright future of e-commerce.

Casino and Bollor ye are also preparing to build Cdiscount platform in Ivory Coast, Senegal and Cameroon. This shows that they are also optimistic about the prospects of e-commerce in Africa. On the other hand, they also make online shopping more reliable and make consumers more confident.

In addition, as young people in Africa account for a relatively high proportion and the unemployment rate is very high (averaging 60%), the development of e-commerce will play an important role in creating employment and promoting economic development, and will certainly win the support of African countries.

In general, Africa has great potential for developing e-commerce, and is expected to occupy an increasingly important position in trade.

In recent years, China has taken a number of measures to expand its trade in Africa, such as the implementation of the "non trade special plan", to help African countries improve the conditions of customs and commodity inspection facilities, carry out pre shipment inspection of non industrial goods, set up an African product exhibition center, give zero tariff treatment to goods exported to China from 97% of the 30 least developed countries in Africa to establish diplomatic relations with China, try to take part in the process of African economic integration, and sign the framework agreement on economic and trade cooperation with the East African community and the economic community of West African States respectively, and put forward cooperation with Africa to build Africa's high-speed railway network, expressway network and regional aviation network "three big networks" to promote the interconnection and cooperation of African regional trade.

In December 2015, President Xi Jinping further announced the implementation of the ten major Sino African cooperation plans at the Johannesburg summit of the China Africa Cooperation Forum, and the Sino African Trade and investment facilitation cooperation plan is one of the key points.

In order to create a new growth point of Sino African trade cooperation and achieve a new leap in Sino African trade cooperation, we have the following countermeasures and suggestions.

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Timely introduction and analysis of new trends in African Trade and industrial policies, with special attention to possible tax and foreign exchange control measures.

In China, there are not many people who know a lot about the two markets in China and Africa. Many Chinese enterprises are often misled into some erroneous and outdated concepts. Understanding the African market and timely follow-up to the latest trade policy, industrial environment and market dynamics in Africa will help Chinese enterprises to open up ideas, analyze opportunities and risks, and help establish good relations with consumers and customers.

Because China's trading enterprises are mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, with limited manpower and financial resources, it is often hard for them to study and analyze the latest policies on their own, and the government has the ability to provide these latest African trade policies and industrial environment in time, especially the relevant foreign exchange control measures and tax policy information that may be introduced to help enterprises to be vigilant.

Risk, control shipment, strengthen collection tracking, avoid accidental violation and other issues.

To help China Africa suppliers and buyers build platforms and establish an operation mechanism for buying and selling.

Trade needs supply and demand side to know the relevant supply and demand information. If the government or chamber of commerce comes forward to help the suppliers and buyers of both sides to build a platform and establish the operation mechanism of purchase and sale, it will greatly promote the development of Sino African trade.

At present, there are some successful examples in this respect.

For example, China is one of the main buyers of sesame, while Nigeria has high quality and high quality sesame seeds. At the same time, it needs to find a sales market. In order to promote bilateral trade, the Nigeria commodity exchange and the Chinese food and Animal Import and Export Chamber of Commerce signed a memorandum of understanding to sell agricultural products, especially sesame. The aim is to help establish the operation mechanism of Chinese enterprises purchasing agricultural products in Nigeria through the joint efforts of two agencies, to build a platform for the trade of agricultural products between the two countries: orders placed by Chinese businessmen through platforms established by two institutions, and Nigeria farmers to sell their products through this platform, thus facilitating the perfect combination of African supply and demand, China's supply and Africa's needs.

Although the digital revolution in Africa has been developing for some time, the utilization rate of Internet still lags far behind other countries in the world. The number of Internet users is only 29%, which is lower than the 49% level in the world.

Among them, only South Africa, Kenya and other countries, as well as Mauritius and Seychelles and other small countries have more network facilities and frequent network activities.

Although Africa has unlimited potential for e-commerce, at present, the lack of electronic technology has threatened the development of its electronic economy.

To get rid of this situation, China can launch the "young African electronic technology training program" to help Africa cultivate e-commerce talents.

Because the unemployment rate of young people in Africa is 60%, the development of e-commerce technology will play an important role in creating employment and promoting economic development.

At present, China's HUAWEI company has planned to establish a world-class information and communication technology training center in Nigeria to help local youth get more job opportunities, which is a good start.

Encourage Chinese enterprises to enter Africa and invest in China's exports of goods and equipment.

From the foregoing, African countries have a strong desire to develop their own industries in order to get rid of the unfavorable situation of single raw material exporting countries. They are more and more inclined to adopt the policy of increasing the import cost of manufactured goods: substantially increase import tariffs on products such as steel, second-hand leather products, clothing, food, shoes and other products, strengthen the import management of products such as automobiles, cement and steel bars, or even directly prohibit the import of some products that can be produced locally, while giving preferential treatment to the raw materials, parts and equipment of the finished products.

If we go into Africa and invest in factories locally (at present, more suitable industries include building materials, textiles, shoemaking, food processing, etc.), we will not only avoid the troubles of imported manufactures, enjoy preferential import taxes, the tariff reductions and exemptions granted by African regional organizations to Member States, and tax concessions granted to African countries by the European and American countries, so as to drive the export of Chinese commodities and equipment, but also pfer China's surplus capacity, use cheap labour and resources, reduce production costs, alleviate the dissatisfaction caused by trade deficits in Africa, and contribute to the sustainable development of Sino African cooperation.