Africa-Press – Botswana. Some business operators who attended Botswana-Zimbabwe Joint Business Forum have called on their governments to remove all the impediments that hinder smooth trading between the two countries.
While appreciating that trade was going well between the two countries because of the bilateral agreement and availed opportunities, they said there were some bottlenecks that needed to be ironed out for their businesses to thrive, broaden their horizons and export base.
They said the bilateral trade agreement could also promote value addition as well as create employment opportunities.
One of the business operators, Mr Mist Setaung appreciated the trade agreement made by the two countries noting that the instrument was ideal to boost business but decried that trading in Zimbabwe was expensive as compared to Botswana side.
He urged the two governments to consider reviewing the Zimbabwean currency and see if they could allow usages of Pula to make trading cheaper and affordable.
He also complained that the Zimbabwean visa processing at the border post was still manual and thus caused delays in facilitating travellers crossing into Zimbabwe adding that could also tarnish the name of the country as some tourists were impatient to wait in a queue.
Mr Setaung, who is a tour operator, urged the Zimbabwe government to consider computerising visas to speed up the process. “We really appreciate the bilateral trade agreement instrument because it has the potential to foster and facilitate trade growth between the two countries,” he added.
Mr Rod Bateman who is the managing director of Aliboats Company in Maun said there were a lot of opportunities that could be exploited in Zimbabwe citing that he wanted to manufacture and supply boat trailers but it was impossible because of the requirements in place.
Despite that, he said Aliboats Company was currently enjoying a lucrative market in Zimbabwe as they had created partnership with some buyers whom they supply them with boats and sell to their clientele.
Birthed in 1986, Aliboats manufactures and supplies various lodges in the Okavango Delta with aluminium boats.
The company also enjoyed support outside the country as 80 per cent of its production was exported to countries such as South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Uganda and Angola among others. However, Mr Bateman noted that it was not any easy journey to break into the Zimbabwe market because some people had been producing world class fibre boats for years in Zimbabwe and much attention was given to those companies.
“It seems Zimbabwean are patriotic as they supported the local business and gave little attention to the imports hence it was difficult to penetrate the market. Indeed patience in business pays, the fibre boat businesses collapsed and that is when I started creating partnerships,” he added.
He said his business started receiving orders from Zimbabwe and currently, he had supplied 30 boats noting that one potential operator showed interest to market their products in Harare and placed an order of 26 boats of which nine were completed.
Responding to the comments, Zimbabwe Trade chief executive officer, Mr Allan Majuru assured operators that they would look into all issues of concern and see how best they could address them because their aim was to encourage the business community from both countries to explore market for export opportunities and take advantage of bilateral relations that facilitate and enable cross border trade.
He said they want to see Botswana becoming one of Zimbabwe’s top ten trade partners hence it was critical to diversify the product basket to strengthen trade relations.
Botswana Investment and Trade Centre (BITC) chief executive officer, Mr Keletsositse Olebile concurred that it was important to remove all obstacles that hindered the ease of doing business between the two countries in an effort to increase trade.
He called on the business community from Botswana to network for possible partnerships as enabled by the available bilateral trade agreements.
He also gave an overview of the opportunities that exists between the two countries citing areas that both could tap into to grow trade and business relations.
Mr Olebile also urged the Zimbabwean business community to consider setting up some structures in Botswana particularly for raising capital and expansion of their operations, stating that when they operate in Botswana, they would be able to do business in every corner of the world.
dailynews
For More News And Analysis About Botswana Follow Africa-Press
