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Pretoria, SOUTH AFRICA: Singapore and South Africa have pledged to take existing strong bilateral relations to the next level.

Singapore President S R Nathan and his South African counterpart Thabo Mbeki made this call when they met in the South African capital on Thursday.

A grand welcome for Singapore President S R Nathan's first state visit to South Africa - Mr Nathan arrived with a delegation of ministers, senior officials and representatives from various businesses.

And he says there are good opportunities for Singapore and South Africa to work together in areas like trade promotion, tourism and education.

Last year, two-way trade between the two countries totalled US$1.6 billion and Singapore is keen to take bilateral relations to a higher level.

Said President Nathan, "We have proposed for discussion the prospect of a free trade agreement between Singapore and South Africa. But as you are [a] party of the South African customs union, I think it will be necessary for other members of the union to come together to agree on to move this process forward."

"We've done a number of free trade agreements called by different names with India, with Japan, China with Singapore and ASEAN, India with Singapore and ASEAN, Australia, New Zealand. So free trade arrangements are working in many of these places and I can't see why not in Southern Africa."

During their talks, President Nathan also pointed out the potential benefits for both countries through the liberalisation of air services...with a view to concluding an open skies agreement.

On its part, South Africa has expressed interest in learning from Singapore's experience about regional integration through ASEAN.

President Mbeki reiterated the urgent need for South Africa and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries to learn from the ASEAN experience as this might help accelerate the progress of SADC.

"Later this year, Singapore assumes the chair of ASEAN. We have been very keen…to strengthen the Africa-Asia partnership and to address the common challenges of development," said President Mbeki.

"We need to look at what actually has been the experience of ASEAN in terms of this regional integration, what has been done, what has worked, what hasn't worked because that experience I think would be very directly relevant to what the African continent itself and the region the SADC region and the African continent are discussing."

Besides Mr Mbeki, Mr Nathan also met Deputy President Phumzilie Mlambo-Ngcuka.

At a special reception hosted by the Singapore High Commission, President Nathan met Singaporeans who are living and working in South Africa. - CNA/yy