Private Sector Development Association – PSDA president Yusuf Dodia has urged government to ensure that all bilateral agreements are tailored to promote local businesses and promote youth entrepreneurship in the country.
Dodia cited the recent increased bilateral trade between Zambia and China to be an opportunity that should be used to empower youth entrepreneurship together with local small and medium businesses in the country to realize the full benefits.
The PSDA President told the Zambia Business Times – ZBT in an exclusive interview that government’s bilateral arrangements should be targeted at opening opportunities for young people as the country constitutes over 60 percent of youths most of who are either unemployed or under employed.
He said engaging youths and local enterprises in trade development plans will enable them open business markets in neighboring countries and join in cross border trade adding that failure to create a favorable environment for small and medium scale business, any existing bilateral relations have less impact locally if the benefits do not trickle down to young people and local economy.
He adds that Zambia has significant opportunities to grow its exports portfolio by utilizing young entrepreneurs and small & medium businesses in the country. “The agreements that Zambia has with countries like Angola, China, Egypt, Japan and many others should be reviewed to ensure that they open up opportunities for young people to take part in trade and business in contribution to national development”, he said
He has however advised youths in the country to be proactive and engage themselves with institutions that promote trade at all levels such as COMESA, Cross Border Trade Association for more open opportunities and make the challenges they face known so that solutions can be found.
The Chinese ambassodor recently announced that trade between Zambia and China hit US$5 billion in 2018. This levels of trade volumes growth were welcomed by a cross section of economic players but questions have arisen on the trickle down effects of this trade volumes to locally owned small and medium size businesses and youths in Zambia.
With the diminished to stunted growth in formal jobs, there is a call for trade and business activities in Zambia to have a sizeable share reserved for local businesses for economic benefits to flow and trickle down to local citizens and youths.
In the construction sector for instance, there has been a policy of 20% sub-Contracting to local businesses but this move is not yielded the needed local empowerment due to lack of supporting legislation.
