The Zambian government has expressed worry at the continued failure by local manufacturers to exploit favourable export trade provisions under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Industry permanent secretary Davies Chilipamushi said yesterday that despite Government opening up marketing opportunities, the volume of trade had continued to stagnate.

He said the trade balance had now tilted against Zambia because of the poor response by producers and exporters to exploit market opportunities.

He said while other countries had increased imports into Zambia, local firms had not increased the amount of goods exported out of the country.

Mr Chilipamushi, who was speaking at the official opening of the AGOA sensitisation workshop in Lusaka, said since the inception of AGOA in 2000 only 700,000 dollars worth of goods had been exported into the United States of America (USA).

"Government appreciates that the macro-economic situation in the country has not been favourable but I believe Government has done so much to try and stabilise the market. We are putting in place a number of things that will encourage the response mechanism, these include an export strategy that has already been put in place," he said.

He, however, commended exporters of non-traditional goods, who he said had, for the first time, surpassed the US$1 billion export earnings mark in 2004.

He said this was the first time such a volume had been exported in the last 10 years and called on exporters to sustain the growth so that the volume would double within the next four years.

Latest AGOA Trade Data currently available 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: (click each link to view)