MINISTRY ADVANCES ON E-COMMERCE PORTAL
Ministry of Investment Trade and Industry will roll out the electronic commerce portal along with the legal framework which will allow the Ministry to facilitate the service.
The service, which is expected to be completed in September, will enable businesses to trade at the comfort of their homes. This will also address the challenge of access to market by the small market enterprises. In his update, Minister of Investment Trade and Industry, Mmusi Kgafela said in efforts to mitigate the impact of Covid -19 on small medium enterprises, government fast tracked the electronic business services which include the E-commerce services. “One of the things that we doubled our efforts on is the e-services which will enable businesses to conduct trade activities electronically. Our intention is to launch the platform by September this year.” The government started the E-Commerce strategy in 2018.
He pointed out that Covid -19 pandemic has affected the Small Medium and Micro enterprises more than other businesses and in regard to this government came up with initiatives to assist them. “We are trying by all means to capacitate our SMMEs to improve their services and products. We are working with our parastatals like Local Enterprises Authority (LEA) and Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) to register SMMEs and this will enable procuring entities to easily access and buy from SMMEs.”
Last year government allocated a sum of P1.3 billion to The Industry Support Fund (ISF) program which was made available to development of finance institutions like LEA, CEDA, National Development Bank and Botswana Development Corporation.