JOHANNESBURG, July 15 (Xinhua) -- South Africa and the European Union will hold their sixth summit this week, the official Bua news agency reported on Monday.
During the summit in the administrative capital of Pretoria on Thursday, South African President Jacob Zuma will meet with the EU delegation led by President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso.
The fifth summit between South Africa and the EU took place in Brussels in September 2012.
Both sides will focus on their political and trade relations at the upcoming summit.
South Africa and the EU have developed a comprehensive partnership since the apartheid ended in the country in 1994.
A Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement (TDCA) was signed in 1999 as a legal basis for overall relations between South Africa and the EU.
"Given the challenges that face South Africa at the moment, President Zuma will emphasize its engagements with the EU around a central theme of the job creation through inward investment," Bua said.
This is in line with the diverse demands of the South African national development plan, which envisages investment as broad and multi-faceted as possible to encompass all the sectors of the bilateral relationship, according to the report.
Between 2000 and 2011, the EU was South Africa's most important regional trading partner, with bilateral trade growing by 13 percent in 2011.
As a main development investor, the EU has provided South Africa with an aid package of more than 1.5 billion U. S. dollars since 2007. The EU's foreign direct investments (FDI) stock make up about 70 percent of South Africa's total FDI.
However, South Africa's Ambassador to Belgium Mxolisi Nkosi warned on July 7 that there was a trend of rising protectionism from the EU to block South African exports.
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