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MANZINI – Government, through EIPA and the USAID Trade Hub, is doing all it can to educate, encourage and open doors for businesses to export to the USA through AGOA.

This is according to the Eswatini Investment Promotion Authority (EIPA) Manager External Trade Sibusiso Mnisi, who said Eswatini annual export figures to AGOA pre-COVID-19 in 2019 ranged between E130 million to E170 million, depending on the demand.

However, he said as an investment promotion authority, they were adamant that these figures would increase post-COVID-19.

Mnisi said these figures were largely dominated by export of sugar industry, followed by textile and apparel sector, then nuts and processed food stuff, handcraft and cosmetics.

“The figures show that about 10 per cent of products that are produced in the country are exported to the USA,” Mnisi said.

He was asked what the authority was doing to encourage businesses to take full advantage of AGOA so that they could grow, and in the process stimulate the economy and create more job opportunities. In response, Mnisi said after Eswatini’s readmission toAGOAin 2018, EIPA hosted a seminar to sensitise local traders about its return and the access to over 6 000 tariff lines and duty free export opportunities available. He said this seminar also addressed the requirements that local traders needed to undertake to qualify to export their products to USA duty free through AGOA.

Again, Mnisi said the mandate was to facilitate trade and investment in Eswatini and encouraging export trade to form part of the organisation’s duties. He said in an effort to encourage participation in AGOA by local businesses, EIPA and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Trade Hub have spearheaded two initiatives. He said the first one was a series of Export Readiness Training workshops, which were hosted at scheduled periods throughout the year.

“One of the aims of the training is to increase the number of exporters in Eswatini to take full advantage of USA markets through AGOA,” the external trade manager said.

He said these sessions looked at how export ready businesses could market their products to potential buyers in the USAas well as how to navigate the regulatory requirements which needed to be met before exporting a product to this region through AGOA.

Awards

According to the investment promotion authority’s external trade manager, the second initiative was the Eswatini Exporter Awards, which award outstanding export activity by local companies through AGOA to the USA and to SouthAfrica. He said these awards were also linked to the Regional Exporter Awards which looked at awarding exporters in the SADC region who had demonstrated good performance in exports through AGOA.

Over and above, the manager said in these initiatives, EIPA was working closely with USAID

Trade Hub and undertook many webinars and physical meetings or trainings. He said the topics included how to export handcraft, cosmetics, and food and beverages to USA, import requirements for the USA for the above-mentioned products and linking local traders with buyers in the USA and vendors in platforms such as Amazon. He added that they also trained traders on how to use e-commerce to access USA market and digital marketing to circumvent challenges posed by COVID-19 for physical trade missions.

On another note, Msibi highlighted that a challenge that businesses often faced in terms of meeting the requirements for export orders was funding. Thereafter, he said there were a number of funding opportunities available for businesses who were export ready and wished to take part in export opportunities abroad, whether throughAGOAor other trade agreements.

He emphasised to businesses that AGOA offered over 6 000 tariff lines of which traders were stretched to exploit, hence the need to increase the number of export through export readiness and promoting funding schemes such as the Export Credit Guarantee Scheme which was administered by EswatiniBank.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade and said it shared similar sentiments with EIPA because they worked together. The ministry said it would get updated statistics about trade between the country and USA from the Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS) in due course.