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Women traders’ lack of funding saddens Chirwa

10 March 2015

Lack of access to finance is a major hindrance for women cross-border traders to expand their businesses, says Comesa trade policy analyst John Chirwa.

Lack of access to finance is a major hindrance for women cross-border traders to expand their businesses, says Comesa trade policy analyst John Chirwa.
Chirwa said high collateral demands on the financial market continued to hamper progress in the growth of cross-border trading, which is 70 per cent dominated by women.
In an interview, Chirwa said women traders had contributed to the growth of respective economies in Comesa’s 19-member countries in different ways, but that they could do more with easy access to funds.
Comesa appeals to banks to consider coming up with conducive credit financing such as lower interest rates and provide information to women on how to access funding.
Currently, interest rates on the market average 24 per cent.
Chirwa said women traders had contributed to the uplifting of livelihoods starting at household level by ensuring food security through agricultural-related products and have moved food from food surplus areas to food deficit areas within the region. Through their trade, others have been able to sustain their families and create employment. With access to finances, they can do even more.
Apart from the challenge of finances, Chirwa said Comesa cross-border traders, mostly semi-literate, had difficulties to sufficiently comprehend procedures of conducting cross-border trade.
He said Comesa had since come up with a Simplified Trade Regime [STR] in trying to help women with procedural demands and provide them with information about their rights.
Chirwa said Comesa had come up with a US$1,000 threshold rule where a trader’s goods not exceeding that amount were exempted from paying tax.
He said among other initiatives that Comesa was considering to help women traders were the provision of infrastructure such as boarding houses at border points.
“This will reduce the harassment of women at border points even by truck drivers and border officials.
Violence against women is one of the challenges the small-scale cross-border traders are facing, and 70 per cent of them are affected,” said Chirwa.
Comesa established the STR in 2010 initially enlisting Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe with now Burundi, Congo DR, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda coming on board.
http://www.postzambia.com/news.php?id=5759

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