By KENNEDY MUPESENI –
THE Zambia Association of Manufacturers (ZAM) will exhaust regional markets before pushing for entry into other markets like the vast United States (US).
A local economist has, however, called for improvement in the quality of local products to gain global acceptance.
According to the US Department of Commerce, trade volumes between Zambia and the US   dropped from US$131 million in 2015 to $113 million last year with Foreign Direct investments (FDI) from the US
standing at $127 million in 2014.
The decrease is despite Zambia’s eligibility under African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) which qualifies it as a preferential exporter for textile and apparel to that country.
ZAM president Rosetta Mwape-Chabala said while the association is aware of the AGOA benefits; it would rather deal with the yearning regional market before venturing into the global market like that of
the US.
“Export destinations like the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have not been fully exploited, we are working on creating the capacity to supply such markets before venturing into the global market,” Ms Mwape-Chabala said.
She said in an interview at the weekend that the US market was more complicated and that the first thing for the manufacturers was to look to the nearer market rather than rushing out of the regional market whose potential had not been fully exploited.
Ms Mwape-Chabala said there was need for a strong infrastructure to support the manufacturing industry for the country to compete effectively on regional and global levels.
But Maambo Hamaundu said to change Zambia’s trade imbalance, the country should work on improving global perception on locally-manufactured goods while working on quality improvement.
“The first thing to deal with is the nation’s productive levels, followed by quality improvement and perceptions, because we may have robust production capacity but because of perception issues we tend to lose out,” Mr Hamaundu said in a separate interview.
He said manufacturers should strive to make competitive products that can sell at the world market if the country was to address trade imbalances with its global trading partners.