Seminar promotes export culture among local businesspersons

Arming Musina entrepreneurs with skills, knowledge and information that would enable them to export their products to international markets is likely to result in them creating job opportunities for residents in the area.
This is according to the Chief Whip of Musina Local Municipality, Festus Mafela who addressed an Export Awareness Seminar hosted by the Department of Trade and Industry (dti) in partnership with the Department of Economic Development, Environment and Tourism (Ledet) at the Nwanedi Agricultural Office in Madimbo last Wednesday. In a statement, the dti highlighted the purpose of the seminar as being a platform to raise the level of export awareness among entrepreneurs with the aim of promoting the export culture by equipping small and medium enterprises with the right knowledge, information and skills.
Mafela was quoted to have said “The impact of empowering entrepreneurs with the necessary information and knowledge that they require in order to be able to export their products will be phenomenal. As soon as they penetrate the international markets and obtaining orders for their products, they will be compelled to increase their production in order to service these markets. In that way, they will have to employ more people.”
It was further reported that the majority of businesspeople who participated in the seminar were local farmers who produce a variety of cash crops including tomatoes, butternut, gem squash and green peppers. They were inspired to learn that more than R3 billion of the R4,5 billion export sales generated by companies that were funded by the department to participate in group international exhibitions and selling missions in the last financial year was generated from primary agricultural and agro-processing products, the statement read.
The entrepreneurs learnt about various aspects of operating in the international export market that include customising their products according to the requirements of clients and various countries quality standards, obtaining export and imports licences, capacity and ability to produce the required quantities for export market, transportation, pricing, marketing plan and the competition they have to contend with on the international market.

Story: ENDY SENYATSI
>>endy@observer.co.za