The government has called on the United States government to relax rules on the importation of cotton and coffee and other products for Zambia's participation in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) to be meaningful.

Speaking in Lusaka recently, Commerce, Trade and Industry Minister Dipak Patel said relaxing the rules on coffee, cotton and other agricultural products would broaden Zambia's trade participation.

"There are a lot of rules on agricultural products, especially phytosanitary rules. The US government should consider relaxing rules on coffee and cotton and other agricultural products," he said.

Mr Patel said issues that affected Zambia in AGOA were immense and a lot of work had to be done by the Zambian companies to penetrate the US market.

"As a country, we haven't been a success in AGOA, but we have to do what has to be done. We want to work out a way in which we can penetrate and utilise AGOA," he said.

And Mr Patel said African governments should consider selling their products within the region.

He said it might be cheaper to sell products within Africa than always thinking of shipping products.

"Trade is not all about seeing our products being shipped out. We could actually do with trade within the region. This could be more profitable and may help us build a bigger capacity," Mr Patel said.

Latest AGOA Trade Data on AGOA.info


Click here to view a sector profile of Zambia’s bilateral trade with the United States, disaggregated by total exports and imports, AGOA exports and GSP exports.

Other regularly updated trade statistics on AGOA.info include: