Zimbabwe’s national trade development organisation, ZimTrade, will host the Exporters’ Conference on 20 October 2016, at the Meikles Hotel in Harare.
The conference will be held under the theme, “Maximising Competitive Advantage to Drive Export-Led Growth”.
Zimbabwe’s current trade performance is unsustainable as it has been persistently characterised by deficits. As at 31 August 2016, the cumulative deficit for the year stood at USD1,8 billion. Exports are the main source of new money in the economy. Therefore, the need to improve the ease of doing export business cannot be overemphasized.
ZimTrade commends the measures pronounced by Government, which are aimed at promoting export-led growth. We, therefore, appeal for immediate implementation of these interventions.
The conference aims to bring policy makers and business together to map the way forward on how to stimulate enterprise competitiveness. Therefore, we have invited the Minister of Industry and Commerce, the Deputy Chief Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet as well as the Reserve Bank Governor Office of the President.
The conference is also a platform to learn best business practices that companies and policy makes can adopt to improve our ways of doing business.
We have invited a Customs and Trade Facilitation international expert, who will focus on Simplification of Export Processes from a Global perspective.
The challenges being faced by Zimbabwean exporters are not unique as other African countries have gone through similar experiences. In this regard, we have invited a speaker from Mauritius who will share how they successfully implemented pro export reforms.
We will also host an Exporter of the Year Awards in the evening. The objective of the awards is to develop and nurture a strong culture of exporting within the Zimbabwean enterprise sector by giving recognition to enterprises that excel in the export of value added products. We applaud these exporters for their resilience despite the challenges they face.
