The Eswatini Investment Promotion Authority (EIPA) has noted with great interest the retention of Eswatini on the list of countries eligible to benefit from the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
In its capacity as a trade and investment promotion agency, EIPA highlighted the importance of this milestone for the nation in enhancing export trade. EIPA CEO, Sibani Mngomezulu lauded the government of Eswatini for its commitment to ensuring that there is a smooth trade environment for local businesses.
“We would like to applaud the government of eSwatini, through our guiding Ministry, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Trade for the commitment and unwavering support to create a stable business environment for traders and investors to operate within our borders. The retention of Eswatini under AGOA means that businesses in the country will continue to enjoy preferential trade terms when selling their goods to the American market and in so doing, lays the platform for an increase in exports. Such achievements enable EIPA to more effectively carry out its mandate to attract, promote, encourage, and facilitate local and foreign direct investment and trade in Eswatini for Economic Development,” he said.
Eswatini’s annual export figures through AGOA in 2022 stood at just over $23.5 million (USD). Export trade from Eswatini through AGOA is largely dominated by the export of sugar followed by textiles and apparel, nuts and processed foodstuff, handcraft, and cosmetics.
The CEO noted that some of the most recent training opportunities EIPA has made available through support from its partners include a recent collaboration with the USAID Africa Trade and Investment Southern Africa Buy-in Activity where an Export Readiness Training targeting local domestic traders and aspiring exporting MSMEs was hosted. The training, which was given free of charge aimed at capacitating local traders with the skills and technical knowledge required to export to the US.
Some of the areas covered include how to export handcraft, cosmetics, and food and beverages to the USA, import requirements for the USA for the above products, linking local traders with buyers in the USA and vendors in platforms such as Amazon.com, and training traders on how to use e-commerce to access USA market and digital marketing. The training also included product development, export standards, export logistics, export finance, and marketing businesses for export.
Mngomezulu further disclosed that another support mechanism includes EIPA’s collaboration with Business Eswatini through the support of the USAID Africa Trade and Investment Southern Africa Buy-in Activity in hosting the Annual Eswatini Exporter Awards.
He said the awards seek to recognize and reward the outstanding performance and noteworthy efforts of local exporters in overcoming market entry barriers and as a result, achieving successful and consistent export trade. This year, several women-owned, youth-owned, and MSMEs formed part of the list of exporters who won awards for their exports to AGOA and other markets around the globe. “Though Eswatini has over 50,000 MSMEs, currently less than 200 MSMEs in Eswatini are exporters with most of these trading only in the domestic market. This allows us to increase the number of companies who are active in this space while supporting the need to see Eswatini continue to become an export-led, private-sector-driven economy. This makes opportunities for training critical in aligning trade with our current economic growth objectives,” Mngomezulu noted.