Africa-Press – Botswana. Botswana Exporters and Manufacturers Association (BEMA) has pledged to continue supporting local manufacturing businesses through exposing all their products to potential buyers.
Speaking at the ongoing Local Manufacturing Summit in Gaborone August 1, BEMA chief executive officer (CEO), Ms Mantlha Sankoloba said their mandate was focused on ensuring that there was enough advocacy on ease of doing business, especially on the manufacturing sector.
She said they also ensured that there was market access for the products that were locally manufactured, saying they engaged strategically with other partners as demonstrated during the summit where Botswana Chambers of Mines provided exhibition space for some of their members’ businesses.
She said through their interactions with potential buyers they had realised that there was not enough knowledge on the products that were manufactured locally.
She therefore reiterated that their efforts were aligned toward ensuring that there was enough exposure of all products for deliberate and intentional support from institutions, especially government.
In addition, Ms Sankoloba said one of the milestones achieved recently was the famous Act cultivated within the textile industry, where they lobbied on behalf of the sector and gave government assurance that local companies were indeed firm to service both local and international markets.
She said this had led to new players coming onboard. Also she said financial institutions as well had shown interest and confidence in the particular sector given that already market access was not a challenge anymore.
Notably, Ms Sankoloba said financial institutions were now confident to risk their investment in companies belonging to this sector.
She further indicated that for bilateral relations they had discussions with the government to help cut all trade barriers which made it difficult for local business to penetrate external markets.
Meanwhile, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Representative, Mr Balazs Horvath said their supplier development programme focused on a myriad of manufacturing sectors including mining and its processing, infrastructure, textile, leather, energy and digital sector which was a key enabler for manufacturing.
He said the programme had a dominant focus on youth entrepreneurs belonging to these sectors, citing that they had a methodology for developing suppliers to enable small and medium sized enterprises to meet rigorous requirements of larger buyers.
Mr Horvath said they had signed a memorandum of understanding with banks to enable small enterprises to have access to finance at all levels.
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