Southern African Customs Union (SACU) - A customs union of five States:  Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland. Under SACU, members enjoy duty-free trade while \extending a common external tariff against imports from the rest of the world. As a member of SACU, Lesotho benefits from the free trade agreements SACU has with other countries or trade blocs. For more information about SACU, visit:  https://www.sacu.int/ .

Southern African Development Community (SADC) – Lesotho is a SADC member. SADC aspires to deepen regional integration and sustainable development through four successive phases: a SADC Free Trade Area (FTA), Customs Union, Common Market, and the Monetary Union.  The SADC FTA was fully implemented in 2012 within twelve SADC Member States, when the maximum tariff liberalization was completed. Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and Seychelles remain outside the FTA.  For more information about SADC, visit: https://www.sadc.int/

African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) - Lesotho benefits from AGOA, a unilateral and non-reciprocal program that provides African countries with duty-free access to the U.S. market for more than 6,400 products.

For more information on AGOA visit: https://agoa.info/

Cotonou Agreement - Lesotho is part of the African Caribbean Pacific (ACP) – European Union (EU) Partnership Agreement, which grants non-reciprocal preferential access to the EU market for some ACP products.  The country is classified as the least developed country under the Cotonou Agreement and its status is enhanced by the EU’s Everything But Arms (EBA) initiative. Under this initiative, Lesotho enjoys quota- and duty-free access to the EU market for everything except arms. In addition, Lesotho has recently initiated an Interim Economic Partnership Agreement with EU which will give it significantly improved access to the EU.

African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) – Lesotho ratified the African Continental Free Trade Area declaration.  AfCFTA main objective is to create a single continental market for goods and services, with free movement of business persons and investments, in order to pave the way for the establishment of the Continental Customs Union and the African Customs Union.  For more information of AfCFTA please visit: HTTPs://au.int

Bilateral Agreements- Lesotho has bilateral investment protection agreement with the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland.   The agreements are posted in full on the following website:  

https://investmentpolicy.unctad.org/international-investment-agreements/countries/117/lesotho

For more information on trade agreements, contact:

The Ministry of Trade, Industry, Business Development and Tourism.

P.O.Box 747,

Maseru

Lesotho

Tel: (266) 2232 4939

Fax: (266) 2231 0644

Website: http://www.trade.gov.ls/