The Sunday News
Njabulo Bhebe, Business Reporter
THERE is a need for Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to explore vast marketing opportunities, which exist within the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) through enhancing the competitiveness of their goods and services, an expert has said.
In an interview with Sunday News Business last Thursday on the sidelines of a two-day export awareness seminar organised by ZimTrade in Bulawayo, the organisation’s associate trainer, Mr Denis Choguya, said SMEs should leverage on Comesa’s willingness to support the sector by improving the quality of their products and services so as to tap into the trading bloc’s potentially lucrative market.
“Comesa realised that our (Zimbabwean) economy runs on SMEs so they are eager to support them and capacitate them so that they can export their products. So now there is a need for SMEs to zero in on quality and the key ingredient of quality is consistence. When they give buyers samples of their products, they should maintain the same level of impression,” he said.
Mr Choguya said SMEs should also strive to maintain high levels of discipline in honouring their export orders so as to build trust with their clients.
“Exporting requires a huge amount of discipline when it comes to meeting delivery schedules because when you promise someone, they also plan for their business on their end based on those promises and if you fail to meet your promises you are harming their business as well as their brand in that country. So, let’s deliver our promises because customers on the export market are less forgiving,” said Mr Choguya.
He noted that Zimbabwean firms can overcome or counter the high production cost they are faced with through offering a unique product mix.
“There is a need for us to be innovative when coming up with our products, to add uniqueness to them. Of course the cost of production could be high but you could justify a higher price using uniqueness, which could be a superior brand, innovative design, better packaging and a product which is well certified by accredited bodies that allows you to charge a premium price and enables you to compete despite the fact that the cost of production is high,” he added.
The Comesa region constitutes a large market on the continent, with a population of over 480 million people. Comesa’s total trade increased from US$238 billion in 2016 to US$240 billion in 2017. This increase was due to improved export performance which recorded a rise of 19 percent from US$73 billion in 2016 to US$87 billion in 2017.
