Botswana, Türkiye business sectors sign MoU
Staff Writer | Tuesday October 18, 2022 06:00
Botswana's private sector umbrella organisations form the tripartite MoU with Türkiye foreseeing the cooperation establishing a Business Council between the private sectors of both countries.
The new council will promote critical areas of collaboration between Türkiye and Botswana's private sectors to identify potential and focus interests of cooperation on a win-win basis.
As part of the MoU, the Business Council is assigned to observe opportunities in the fields of trade, investment, industrial and technological cooperation, finance, and bilateral and international collaboration and submit proposals to the two governments on how to promote cooperation and overcome
obstacles in trade and economic cooperation between Botswana and Türkiye.
The Business Council is also tasked to share know-how and experiences to support SMMEs.
The MoU was signed in line with the decision taken in the second meeting of the Türkiye-Botswana Joint Commission for Cooperation (JCC), which was held in 2021.
Türkiye’s DEIK is a business diplomacy organisation assigned the task of conducting foreign economic relations of the Turkish private sector. The objectives of DEIK are to assess investment opportunities at home and abroad, and establish partnerships with counterpart organisations worldwide. DEIK has 150 bilateral Business Councils worldwide, including 47 in Africa. It has 2,000 individual members that represent the leading entrepreneurs of Türkiye. It has been active mainly in Africa in line with Türkiye’s strategic vision to promote trade and investment relations with African countries based on mutual benefit.
President of DEIK, Nail Olpak said the partnership aims to add momentum to the cooperation between Turkish and Botswana business organisations. He added that the bilateral trade volume between the two countries is currently below the real potential and the new Business Council will help boost trade and investment relations between the two countries.
Turkish Ambassador to Botswana, Meltem Buyukkarakas welcomed the signing of the MoU as an important step forward in opening new channels of communication and raising awareness among the potential stakeholders of both sides.
"There has been a growing mutual interest from the companies of both countries to do business together and the new Business Council would be a platform of cooperation and experience-sharing between Turkish and Botswana's private sectors and would help identify trade and investment opportunities on a win-win basis," she said.
She added there is an unexploited potential for collaboration, particularly in priority areas of both countries such as agro-processing, manufacturing, tourism, health, energy, mining and mineral beneficiation, digital technologies, and infrastructure.
She said Türkiye is a strategic partner for Africa. Trade volume between Türkiye-Africa reached around $35 billion last year and the value of Turkish investments in the continent surpassed $6 billion.
"We seek to extend the dynamic engagement of the Turkish private sector in many African countries to Botswana on a win-win basis.”
Business Botswana president, Gobusamang Keebine said that business people in Botswana will start seeking more opportunities in Turkey and this goes the same way for Türkiye to start focusing on investment opportunities in Botswana as well.
He added that there are overlapping priority areas for Türkiye and Botswana such as commercialising agriculture, issues of agro-processing, and digitisation of applications and services that can be explored.