Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have been tasked to work with regional governments to reduce challenges they face in order to increase their participation in trading on international markets.

Speaking at the ongoing World Exports Development Forum (WEDF) yesterday, Agnes Katsonga Phiri, the World Customs Organisation vice-chair for Eastern and Southern Africa, said many entrepreneurs lacked market information while pursuing export markets.

"It’s high time SMEs got organised in cooperatives in order to share information because right now most of them don’t know what is expected from them,” Phiri said during a panel discussion.

"Some don’t know which goods are tradable and which ones aren’t. Other times, traders pass through the bush or pay extra moneys to drivers to smuggle goods which don’t attract duty into a country.”

Phiri said at the end of the day, the traders earned little or nothing.

According to Phiri, SMEs move a lot of volumes across the borders and it is the job of the experts like her institution to help them formalise their businesses.

She called for more efforts to enable SMEs to improve on their capacity, learn the customs incentives in place and quickly go through the borders.

Across the region, women are the main entrepreneurs involved in cross border trade, most of them informal.

Women in informal sector

Statistics from the Ministry of Trade and Industry indicate that at the Rwandan borders alone, 1,600 women are involved in informal cross-border trade, which forms 74 per cent of this type of trade.

In the first half of this year, total informal exports amounted to $52.5 million (Rwf35.8 billion) from $56.1 million (Rwf38.3 billion) at the end of June, last year.

Informal imports, on the other hand, decreased by 4.3 per cent from $9.3 million (Rwf6.3 billion) to $8.9 million (Rwf6.1 billion).

This led to a 7 per cent decrease in Rwanda’s positive informal trade balance from $46.8 million to $43.6 million, according to the central bank.

Agricultural produce and livestock remain the major commodities traded informally across borders.

Frank Matsaert, chief executive of TradeMark East Africa, said basing on the success stories of the introduction of the single customs territory and electronic single window projects in the region, there were huge gains to be made particularly by small traders.

"We need to think together with our team on how to remove the hurdles small traders face particularly women at the borders and scale up the previous success that we have been doing,” said Matsaert.