Africa-Press – Eswatini. Yesterday, the department of trade under the ministry of commerce, industry and trade officially opened a five day training workshop on trade in services in preparation for the phase two of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) trade in service negotiations.
The training is attended by members of the public sector and the private sector.
AfCFTA Secretariat Head of Capacity Building and Technical Assistance Tsotetsi Makong said the AfCFTA Secretariat had come to Eswatini to run a programme on capacity building and technical assistance and the main reason for this was to assist the country on the issues that come with the current huge continental shift on the AfCFTA the agreement which was still under implementation.
“As countries begin to move towards implementing this agreement all the different ministries, agencies and the private sector need to know about this agreement,” he said.
He mentioned that they were basically there to support in raising awareness of the agreement, sensitising the people about it and more importantly getting the government of Eswatini ready to implement the agreement.
“It is extremely important from that particular point of view and we have been doing this across multiple countries and Eswatini is one of the chosen countries,” he said.
He stated that beyond the training it was high time for Africa to take on its own destiny and move ahead making sure that trade worked for everybody and not only big companies.
“It should be trade that would work for women, young people as we have high levels of unemployment in the youthful population,” he said.
He mentioned that with the current demographics we can actually harvest a huge demographic, dividend because the projections were that we were going to have huge growth of population among young people.
“We need to prepare ourselves as a continent as we have to ensure that we cut short the journeys that the young people take in getting jobs.
We have to create jobs here and the AfCFTA provides us with that opportunity to create the jobs we need,” he said.
Acting Director of International Trade Department, Muntu Almeida said this training was important for the country to have because it would help local business people, especially those who traded their services, to have market access to the African market that is projected by the AfCFTA which involved 54 countries.
“It will help us as a country to undergo the training because we are planning on negotiating phase two of the agreement.
This will assist the private sector and government to prepare as we about to join this agreement,” he said.
He mentioned that the ministry had done enough to sensitise the initiatives that came with the country joining this agreement to the business sector.
“A couple of weeks ago we had those that come from the AfCFTA together with African Union Commission for Africa were we were preparing to make the strategy of implementing this agreement and the turnout was very good,’ he said.
He stated that they had almost every business people from both the private and public sector where they officially delivered the agreement to them.
“What we were trying to do is to work with them as we are about to develop the strategy,”
“What also made us happy was seeing the youth actively participating at the strategy making,” he said.
The acting director said as a ministry they have tried to sensitise all stakeholders in terms of the opportunities that came with the agreement.
“These opportunities involve businesses now focusing in Africa mostly and looking for the market here in the continent.
The market base is here in Africa,” he said.
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