New us trade initiative to benefit Malawi

Trade Africa—a new United States (US) trade programmes to boost trade with and within Africa—will benefit landlocked Malawi, authorities have said.

President Obama on July 1, in Dar es Salaam, according to a White House press statement, announced a new initiative that will focus on trade facilitation in East African Community and later the rest of Africa.

Commenting on the new programme, National Working Group on Trade Policy chairperson Geoff Mkandawire in an interview on Wednesday said trade facilitation is not the only challenge Malawi experiences.

“The initiative is going to improve our competitiveness, attract more investment and improve our trade performance.  We need to expand our export base and work on our productivity challenges,” said Mkandawire.

Obama speaking at the Business Leaders Forum in Tanzania said more Africans must take advantage of the opportunity to export to the US by making African goods more competitive.

“We’ll launch a new programme to facilitate trade by focusing on moving goods across borders faster and cheaper.  We’ll work with the countries involved to modernise customs, move to single more efficient border crossings, reduce bottlenecks, reduce the roadblocks that stymie the flow of goods to market. Today, the vast majority of our trade with Africa is with just three countries—South Africa, Nigeria and Angola.  We need to broaden that,” said Obama.

Ministry of Industry and Trade spokesperson Wiskes Nkombezi commenting on the programme, in an e-mail on Wednesday, said increasing efficiency of the ports, routes and borders will bear huge benefits to Malawi.

“This is why the government is pursuing the National Single Window System and the one-stop-border-post. We hope that the USA’s goods, therefore modernising it will certainly have a positive impact on Malawi trade,” said Nkombezi.

However, he added that trade facilitation is not the only solution because the country has also challenges on productivity and infrastructural.