Mr Speaker, although our traditional trading partners remain largely the same, with South Africa retaining first place, taking 36% of our exports and providing us with 46% of our imports (over the first 8 months of 2020), a most encouraging aspect of our trade figures over the past two years or so has been our growing presence in a number of regional markets and the slow but steady progress we are making in regaining our rightful place in those markets.
This is largely attributable to an improving business environment, ongoing fiscal and monetary reforms, Ease of Doing Business reforms as well as the intensified emphasis, within all our bilateral and bi-national commission meetings with SADC, Comesa and Tri-Partite Free Trade Area partners, on promoting Zimbabwean produce and products, on targeted trade-missions – including virtual trade missions and market surveys with Mozambique, Namibia, Angola and DRC – and on addressing trade imbalances with our regional partners and others.
Although our overall trade with SADC is down by 12% for the first 8 months of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, bilateral trade with Mauritius, Mozambique, Tanzania and Angola reflects significant improvement.
Further afield, and evidence again of successful engagement, is our growing presence in the Egyptian, Kenyan, Sudanese and Ugandan markets. With the imminent commencement of trading under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), and on the basis of aggressive marketing and trade promotion by Zimtrade, I am confident that our trade performance with all these countries, and indeed others on the continent will continue to improve.
Given our rich human capital resource and the evident demand for qualified, skilled professionals and technical expertise across the continent, it is important that we also concentrate on marketing our impressive potential in the Services sector, transport, tourism, financial, engineering, telecommunications and other professional services from accounting to legal services.
Further afield still, and building on the policy of Engagement and Re-Engagement, progress is being made in developing markets for our produce in the Gulf States and Middle East more broadly, as well as in countries such as Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and others. Efforts continue to expand our presence in already established markets such as China, India, Singapore, the UAE, the UK and others.
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