{"id":65375,"date":"2025-12-17T21:06:46","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T21:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/unions-support-agoa-bill-extension-efforts"},"modified":"2025-12-17T21:59:47","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T21:59:47","slug":"unions-support-agoa-bill-extension-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/lesotho\/all-news\/unions-support-agoa-bill-extension-efforts","title":{"rendered":"Unions Support AGOA Bill Extension Efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"ap-article-header-tag\"> <strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Lesotho. <\/strong> <\/span>Following the United States (U.S) legislators\u2019 tabling of a Bill to extend the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) for three more years a few days ago, the factory workers\u2019 union has embraced the move.<\/p>\n<p>The Bill is said to be seeking to restore stability to Washington\u2019s flagship trade program with sub-Saharan Africa after it lapsed on September 30 this year.<\/p>\n<p>The AGOA Extension Act (H.R. 6500), introduced by Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, aims to renew the program\u2019s expiration date from September 30, 2025, to December 31, 2028, according to the Bill text. The proposal also extends key apparel provisions including the regional apparel and third-country fabric rules through 2028.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in an interview National Clothing Textile and Allied Workers Union (NACTWU) Secretary General Mr. Ts\u2019epang Makakole said though three years is not enough, but it is better saying if the Bill is passed, it would mean that the government of Lesotho has a lot of planning to do within these three years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe government must plan for 2029 when the said extension would expire so that we do not face high job losses. It must increase the line item so that when the textile market struggles due to declines in orders then we have an option to increase somewhere, maybe in agriculture\u201d, he said .<\/p>\n<p class=\"ap-article-footer-note\">Find more news and analyses on <span class=\"ap-highlight-country\">Lesotho<\/span> on the <span class=\"ap-highlight-brand\">Africa Press<\/span> website<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Lesotho. Following the United States (U.S) legislators\u2019 tabling of a Bill to extend the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) for three more years a few days ago, the factory workers\u2019 union has embraced the move. The Bill is said to be seeking to restore stability to Washington\u2019s flagship trade program with sub-Saharan [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":65374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[245],"class_list":["post-65375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-economy","tag-lesotho"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Unions Support AGOA Bill Extension Efforts - Lesotho<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"-article-header-tag&quot;&gt; Africa-Press - Lesotho. 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