{"id":12515,"date":"2026-08-13T12:11:41","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T06:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=12515"},"modified":"2026-08-13T13:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T07:50:09","slug":"south-african-customs-union-sacu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/south-african-customs-union-sacu\/","title":{"rendered":"South African Customs Union"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Southern African Customs Union Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India and the five-member Southern African Customs Union (SACU) recently signed the Terms of Reference (ToR) to start negotiations for a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA), with an aim to\u00a0 conclude the trade talks within a year. <\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Southern African Customs Union\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is an <\/span><b>African regional economic organization.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the <\/span><b>world\u2019s oldest customs union,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> which was established in <\/span><b>1910<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Member countries:<\/b> <b>South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, and Eswatini <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(formerly Swaziland).<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The SACU <\/span><b>Secretariat <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is located in <\/span><b>Windhoek, Namibia.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The five member states maintain a<\/span><b> common external tariff, share customs revenues, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and <\/span><b>coordinate policies <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and decision-making on a wide range of trade issues.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like other customs unions, a key feature of SACU is the application of a <\/span><b>single tariff regime \u2212 the Common External Tariff (CET).\u00a0<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This means the member states form a <\/span><b>single customs territory <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">which provides for a <\/span><b>free movement of goods <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">where <\/span><b>tariffs<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and other barriers are <\/span><b>eliminated <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on all trade <\/span><b>between them.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>CET applies to goods imported from all territories<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that are <\/span><b>not members of SACU.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><b>South Africa<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> accounts for around <\/span><b>91 percent<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the <\/span><b>bloc&#8217;s total economic output<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and is India&#8217;s largest trading partner within the grouping.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>SACU countries<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are also <\/span><b>part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">together with Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe; as well as the island nations of Mauritius, Seychelles, Comoros, and Madagascar. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>News: <\/b><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newindianexpress.com\/business\/2026\/Aug\/12\/india-sacu-sign-terms-of-reference-for-preferential-trade-pact\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">NIE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South African Customs Union (SACU) is the world\u2019s oldest customs union which was established in 1910. Read more about South African Customs Union (SACU), Objective, Member countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":118970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9526],"class_list":["post-12515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","tag-south-african-customs-union","no-featured-image-padding"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12515"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118977,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12515\/revisions\/118977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}