Posted on August, 6, 2019 at 10:03 am
PRESIDENT John Magufuli yesterday called for intensification of intra-technology transfer among African countries to facilitate trade improvement and move the continent out of poverty.
Speaking at the opening of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Industrialization Week and Exhibition in Dar es Salaam, Dr Magufuli said industrialization has marginal contribution to economic development of the continent due to trade barriers.
This year’s Industrialization Week is hosted under the theme “A Conducive Environment for Inclusive and Sustainable Industrial Development, Increased Intra-Regional trade, and Job Creation.”
President Magufuli said there will be more trade opportunities in Africa if intra-African trade and exchange of technology are enhanced.
“In simple words Africa consumes what it does not produce and produces what it does not consume, therefore we need to work on conducting business within ourselves and by doing so we will be able to move forward,” he asserted.
President Magufuli said the exhibition offers an opportunity for African and especially SADC countries to discuss how best to conduct business and support each other by opening markets for each other and ending trade barriers.
Industries contribute only 11percent to GDP of the economic bloc, despite that most developed countries in Europe and Asia chiefly invested in industries.
For his part, Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF) chairperson Salum Shamte said the potential of the private sector in Africa is not well harnessed due to cross border barriers.
He called for the private and public sectors to work together to address the bottleneck.
"If we are to create economies of scale we need to remove cross border trade barriers," said Shamte.
"We need to ask ourselves why are we using billions of dollars to import food yet we have 60 per cent of the available arable land globally."
The Minister for Trade and Industries Innocent Bashungwa said that despite the challenges, Tanzania has been doing fine in doing business in SADC as in 2018 it traded $999.3 million worth of goods and services compared to $877.8 million in the previous year.
“This was an increment of 12.16percent while imports from SADC increased from $6000.6 million to $604 million in 2018 same as an increment of 0.61percent,”
A total of 2,026 people from Southern African Development Community (Sadc) member states had until Saturday registered for participation in the Industry Week, which kicked off yesterday.
Going by the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) Economic and Operations Report for 2017/18, the value of Tanzania’s total intra-Sadc trade stood at Sh3.6 trillion in 2017. The summit is slated for August 17 and 18.
Source: IPP Media