Gaborone — Contemporary Botswana is stable and ready to enhance trade with the European Union (EU), which has been relatively low and heavily undiversified.
This was said recently during a plenary session that premiered on the margins of the Global Expo Botswana (GEB) 2023.
Botswana Investment and Trade Centre (BITC) CEO, Mr Keletsositse Olebile said government had been proactive in entering into bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, which were active and enforced through SADC.
Mr Olebile assured the EU business community that Botswana could give them access to more than 293 million consumers across the SADC region.
He added that through the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), Botswana had signed a number of sub-agreements with regional groupings around the world, indicating that SACU had an agreement with the MERCOSUR countries, which belong with South America.
He also said SACU had an agreement with the UK after BREXIT, mentioning that there was also an EAC-SADC COMESA agreement and SACU-EFTA with the European Free Trade Area countries.
Furthermore, Mr Olebile said Botswana was a beneficiary under AGOA, which gave it unlimited product lines to export to the US and lastly the AfCFTA, whose formalities the country had completed.
Mr Olebile said effectively this suggested that should the EU business sector come to Botswana to produce any product, the agreement would give them preferential access to almost all markets across the globe.
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Meanwhile, Assistant Minister of Trade and Industry, Ms Beauty Manake, said a heavy focus in recent years had been on the diamond and beef sector.
However, she reiterated that the EU continued to be a pivotal investment partner with Botswana.
She said the partnership was expected to ensue in the foreseeable future, noting that the session, along with the broader European Union-Botswana Business Forum (EBBF), offered a valuable opportunity to enhance and enforce trade relations between the two parties.
"Please do not be discouraged by the small population Botswana has to offer. We count ourselves as part of the regional and global market including SACU, SADC and recently AfCFTA," she said.
Ms Manake echoed government's commitment to improving the ease of doing business in Botswana among its priorities. Further, she expressed hope that the discussions ignited during the Expo would spark the interest of potential investors in considering Botswana as part of their expansion strategy into Africa.
BOPA
