Africa-Press – Eswatini. The Southern African Customs Union (SACU) looks into to tackling the need for seamless cross border trade through harmonising regulations to ease trade among the member states.
This was discussed at the first ever SACU investment round table event hosted by Botswana about two weeks ago. This round table was aimed to achieve accelerated industrialisation and pave way for economic recovery among SACU member states.
Through a statement shared by SACU, Executive Secretary Paulina Elago, some of the key challenges said impacting cross-border trade were the high transport costs in the region and the delays in the clearance of cargo.
“Consequently, the role of transport corridors in the region as important economic development corridors was amplified as one of the means to enhance competitiveness of the trading environment in SACU through closer collaboration and partnerships,” she said.
Elago also stated that there was a need for the African region to consider technology, digitalisation as well as intellectual property rights through the development of appropriate brands in addition to the focus on the export of goods.
Risk Management
She said at the round table they also considered risk management from a broader perspective which included transport, corridors, logistics, formalities and processes as well as the importance of the participation of all key stakeholders in terms of facilitating trade.
Other challenges identified by the roundtable were access to funding for entrepreneurs, packaging of investments projects and harmonisation of regional payments systems and mobilising resources from capital markets.
Challenges
“In order to meet these challenges, possible instruments to mobilise financing for industrialisation considered, include pension fund, sovereign wealth funds, debt swaps and remittances from the diaspora,” said Elago.
She further said that the roundtable was also able to explore possible solutions to finance industrialisation which included infrastructure which supported trade as well as export promotion.
“In this regard, the roundtable facilitated Business-to-Business engagements from which 28 connections were made, whose outcomes may manifest in concrete investment projects over time,” she said.
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