Pretoria - President Jacob Zuma will host the third Southern African Customs Union (SACU) Summit for Heads of State and Government in Pretoria on Friday.
The SACU Commission is meeting today and the SACU Council of Ministers gathering will take place tomorrow ahead of Friday's summit.
The summit is expected to receive a progress report from the Council of Ministers on a wide ranging work programme that the Heads of State adopted at the Second SACU Summit on 16 July 2010.
During SACU's 100 year commemoration proceedings, held on 22 April 2010 in Windhoek, Namibia, the SACU Heads of State and Government adopted new vision and mission statements for SACU, and agreed to translate it into a strategic work programme.
The commemoration marked a great milestone for the institution and demonstrated the important political, cultural, economic and developmental relationship that exists amongst the SACU member states.
It is therefore anticipated that the SACU Heads of State and Government will consider SACU's approach to the SADC-COMESA-EAC Tripartite Free Trade Area (FTA) negotiations to be launched at the occasion of the second Tripartite Summit later this year.
This process is critical to the advancement of the regional economic integration agenda.
The summit will be attended by the Heads of State and Government of Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland and South Africa.
