Guinea Country Commercial Guide
Learn about the market conditions, opportunities, regulations, and business conditions in guinea, prepared by at U.S. Embassies worldwide by Commerce Department, State Department and other U.S. agencies’ professionals
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Trade Agreements
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Guinea is a member of the Mano River Union, which includes standardized customs tariffs between Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Guinea is also a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which includes fifteen countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. ECOWAS is in the process of developing a customs union among its members, allowing for the free flow of goods and services between member nations. For instance, at the beginning of 2017, Guinea adopted ECOWAS’s Common Exterior Tariff (TEC), which harmonizes Guinea’s import taxes with other West African states and eliminates the need for assessing import duties at Guinea’s land border crossings, though, sometimes it is difficult to get the required certificates to export under these ECOWAS exemptions.

In addition, Guinea is a signatory of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The AfCFTA officially entered into force on May 30, 2019, and will create a single market for goods and services with free movement of people and capital, expand intra-African trade, and enhance African competitiveness globally. AfCFTA will be the largest free trade area establishing a continent-wide customs union and remove tariffs on 90 percent of traded goods. The implementation agreements and protocols are still pending. On January 1, 2021, African countries opened their markets under the AfCFTA agreement for duty-free goods and service trade.

 Guinea has bilateral investment agreements with Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, China, Egypt, France, The Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Italy, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Serbia, South Africa, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. Although Guinea does not have a Bilateral Investment Treaty or Free Trade Agreement with the United States, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the United States signed a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) in May 2014. There is no Bilateral Tax Treaty between Guinea and the United States. As of January 2022, Guinea lost its beneficiary status in the United States AGOA Trade Preference Program following the September 2021 coup d’état.

The TIFA created a Council on Trade and Investment responsible for identifying and removing trade impediments between the United States and ECOWAS countries. Guinea is not a member of the OECD Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting.

Former President Conde created the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Boke in 2017 under the authority of the Autorite de Développement de l’Administration des Zones Economiques et des Zones Industrielles (ADAZZ). Boke SEZ seeks to develop a logistical and international trade hub for the subregion, focused on promoting domestic mineral and agricultural processing sites. The zone’s operation has not been fully defined and lacks funding to develop the zone sufficiently to attract investors. Guinea has no functioning free trade or export processing zones or warehouses. Additionally, a temporary license to conduct free trade transactions can be obtained with special permission from the Ministry of Economy and Finance

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