It is not surprising in this connection that other economic blocs around the world exclude sugar from the normal free flow of trade. This is the case, for instance, under the North American Free Trade Area, European Union, Andean Pact and Mercosur. The main objective of the agreement should be to enable an orderly growth of the sugar industries in the light of their strategic importance to their respective economies as well as the currently existing distortions surrounding various sugar markets. An agreement which would achieve this objective has two basic components. One is market access and the other is area of cooperation.
Market access can be reciprocal or non-reciprocal.
In the former case, each of the SADC countries would open up their respective markets to each other on some agreed basis. In the latter case, one or some countries would allow market access without requiring reciprocal arrangements with other SADC countries. There are three considerations which account for this tendency. First, the SACU prices are higher than the domestic prices in the neighbouring countries. Second, SACU has a very large market provided by South Africa as the biggest and most advanced economy.