Local Businesses Urged to Tap into African Continental Free Trade Area
VICTORIA, Seychelles — Great potential exists for the private sector in Seychelles to tap into the African market, but businesses need to diversify their products, find effective marketing strategies and concepts so that they can reap the benefits. Principal trade officer from the trade division Jean-Paul d’Offay said this while speaking to the media last week, following the Cabinet’s approval of the Seychelles African Continental Free Trade Area Implementation Strategy.
Mr d’Offay said the trade division presented a paper to the Cabinet on a strategy for the implementation of the AfCFTA at national level. ‘Seychelles, as a member of the AfCFTA, needs to adopt a strategy to carry out this agreement so that it can reap benefits from this. We started working on the draft for this strategy last year and we received assistance from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, which provided us with two experts,’ he explained. Three workshops were held last year to help partners locally to understand the benefits of this strategy.
The African continent is a vast market with great potential, which the private sector in Seychelles can tap into by exporting their products and importing their needed raw materials from the continent. The agreement represents about 1.4 billion consumers and a combined gross domestic product of over 3 billion US dollars. ‘With every strategy, you need to analyse the changes which need to be made in the law, if necessary, and for this we will need to work with the different ministries, governmental bodies. But this strategy is not just for the Ministry of Finance, National Planning and Trade, it is for both public and private sectors,’ Mr d’Offay said, adding that the expansion of Port Victoria will create potential for expanded trade volume.
