GOLD MINE! Arua traders asked to tap business opportunities in S. Sudan, DRC
Members of the UNCCI Arua City branch pose for a group photo with Dr. Bhoka (3L) shortly after the breakfast meeting over the weekend. PHOTO BY ANDREW COHEN AMVESI
BY ANDREW COHEN AMVESI
ARUA. The business community in Arua city has been challenged to take advantage of the location of the city in order to tap business opportunities in the neighboring South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The appeal was made by Dr. George Bhoka Didi, the Obongi County MP during a breakfast meeting organized by Uganda National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (UNCCI) – Arua City interim leadership at Hotel Le Tsuba in Arua city over the weekend.
In his remarks, Bhoka, who was the guest speaker, noted that there is currently a market of about 300m people in the seven states of the East African Community (EAC) with the immediate opportunity for the members of UNCCI Arua city being in the neighboring DRC and South Sudan.
“As a business community in West Nile, let us strategically position ourselves to penetrate the 1.4 billion African market. Coming to the EAC, HE Museveni, the President and the government of Uganda has committed itself to deepen, to broaden and to widen integration of the EAC. We are happy that as we speak now, we have a market of 300m people in the EAC market consisting of seven member states, the eighth is in the pipeline and that is Somalia,” Bhoka said.
“Please for us as the people of West Nile, we are strategically positioned in a market potential of 300m people. The Kenyans are as usual smarter than us, they reached Kinshasa, they reached all regions, they put pen to paper to pen business deals. For us the closest neighbors, how many business deals have the UNCCI Arua city secured with DRC or South Sudan?” Bhoka asked.
He advised that time has come for the business community in the region, especially the UNCCI Arua city to formalize ways of doing smart businesses with Congolese and South Sudanese.
According to Bhoka, the private sector is the engine of growth and development of any economy, a reason traders shouldn’t relax when it comes to tapping business opportunities in neighboring countries.
“The financing that you have, should be used to implement programs, projects, products and services that are well coordinated to meet or exceed market demand and therefore, we need to have a total market approach the way we want to develop the West Nile Chamber of Commerce. A total market approach requires you to look at three key things that would create that enabling environment; you need to work within the legal and regulatory framework, for you to address the demand side issues, for you to address the supply side issues and the aspect of partnerships,” Bhoka stressed.
Caesar Trinity Draecabo, the acting interim chairperson of the UNCCI Arua City encouraged people to formalize their businesses and get registered with the chamber of commerce in the city.
Draecabo further noted that they are beginning sector to sector engagement to build a unique strategy to enable them to organize West Nile trade exhibitions.
“We want to profile sectors and we shall be going to the Agriculture sector; we are going to people in fish services, Boda Boda is also another sector in the industry. We want to profile all this so that at the end of the day, we have the West Nile trade exhibition. Then we have all those honey people, we can only do that when we profile the different sectors,” Draecabo said.
“Members, it is us to build this regional city and we can only do it when we unite, cooperate and move this agenda jointly. So, I want to ask all of you, can we move it together. We are an interim team but I want you people to register and when we get the road map for elections, please I would like us to build one of the strongest teams and we can do that when you join us and we move together,” Draecabo added.
The newly created UNCCI Arua city branch has 47 paid up companies whose owners are now legally mandated to participate in the chamber activities within and outside the city.
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