01 Mar 2020

 Minister of Investment Trade and Industry (MITI), Ms Peggy Serame has underscored the need to re-energize trade and investment between Botswana and Zimbabwe.

She made the remarks when opening the business seminar between the people of the two neighbouring states held on the sidelines of the 2nd session of the Botswana-Zimbabwe Bi-National Commission in Maun on Thursday.

According to Minister Serame, the two trading partners have an opportunity to build on to the long and multi-faceted legacy of strong political, social and economic links dating back to the mid 50’s.

She said for instance the two SADC countries had trade facilitation instruments such as the Rules of Origin which allowed some goods of importance to the two nations’ economies to be traded without attracting customs duties as long as they met the minimum requirement of 25 per cent local content.

“I wish to highlight that for our countries to maximize benefits from the bilateral arrangement and free trade agreements, we need to pay attention to creating an enabling environment for doing business,” she said citing that Botswana had moved a step ahead in this respect and undertaken a number of reforms in areas of starting a business, paying taxes and border procedures and process.

Ease of doing business, Minister Serame noted, had seen MITI start a One Stop Service Centre to facilitate investors in the cities of Gaborone and Francistown at no cost to the investor.

She stated that government had through MITI established Special Economic Zones (SEZA) in a bid to accelerate investment into the country through development of the Zones.

Ms Serame was thus hopeful this conducive business environment would attract investors from Zimbabwe to take advantage of the incentives investment within the zones with a view to further enhance economic ties between the two countries.

Zimbabwe’s Minister of Industry and Commerce, Dr Sekai Nzenza concurred that the platform created an opportunity for business delegations from the two countries to exploit available business opportunity in areas among others; engineering, textiles, services, food and beverages, leather.

She thus assured Ms Serame that Zimbabwean business delegation that she led were a determined lot that were earnestly seeking for business opportunities.

Dr Nzenza also challenged business community from both Botswana and Zimbabwe to produce quality goods if they harboured the ambition to trade pound for pound and maximise benefits that come with trade agreements such as the African Free Trade Area (AFTA).

She complained also that the level of trade between Botswana and Zimbabwe was not as encouraging and called on business people from both countries to take advantage of existing trade agreements to increase business trade and engagements.

“Business forums like this one will inject energy to boost trade between our two countries and people,” she said. Ends