Trade Agreements
Lesotho actively participates in the activities of regional organisations, including the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), the Common Monetary Area (CMA) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which work to address common issues through regional integration, cooperation and coordination.
Lesotho is a signatory to the Cotonou Agreement, which is being renegotiated with the aim of creating Free Trade Agreements between the Africa Caribbean Pacific (ACP) region and the EU. Known as Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), these new arrangements are essential for reciprocal free trade arrangements and are compatible with the multilateral trade rules of the WTO.
Three members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) - Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana - signed an interim economic partnership agreement, or EPA, with the European Union on 4 June 2009. The deal will give the SADC countries access to EU markets while the parties negotiate a permanent EPA. The revised rules of origin in the EPA's improve the terms on which Lesotho can trade important exports like textiles to Europe. Lesotho producers also benefit from selling products duty and quota free to the United States of America under AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act) an American initiative that has created preferential terms of trade on a range of products manufactured in Africa for the US market.