The Ministry of Industrialisation and Trade (MIT) is currently developing a trade policy to define how Namibia will conduct its trade with bilateral, regional, and multilateral trading partners.
The trade policy will cover the complete framework of laws, regulations, international agreements, and government guidelines and pronouncements on trade.
“This specific policy will play a key role in the flow of goods and services between Namibia and other trading partners. The chief objective of the workshop is to solicit inputs on the draft policy document before it is submitted to the Cabinet for approval. The workshop will be conducted in a hybrid format, both physically and virtually,” said MIT spokesperson, Elijah Mukubonda.
Previously, the draft trade policy was reviewed during a capacity-building workshop on Public Policy Development in October 2021. “The purpose of the workshop was to subject the trade policy to expert review, enabling participants and technical experts to provide input into how the trade policy could be refocused and refined. The workshop noted that more work was required to improve associated policies, such as Trade in Goods and Trade in Service Policies, including realigning the trade policy to the guidelines on the Public Policy Making Process,” he adds.
On these grounds, Mukubonda says there is a need now to expose the policy to stakeholder scrutiny to straighten out relevant matters and strengthen the dialogue.
