The Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Exports and Industrial Development, Odrek Rwabwogo, held a day long session with officials from the European Global Gateway Program in Hague Netherlands to make a case for the aggregation centres for export of food, processed minerals and other industrial products from Uganda to Africa, Europe, Middle East and Asia as a way to encourage economic development and build stronger societies with shared vision of a new Netherlands and larger Europe.
The Meeting held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department of Sustainable Economic Development of Netherlands was chaired by Merchel Germann, the Dutch Ambassador for business development brought together Annouk Baron the Global Gateway Project Coordinator, Jeroen Muntinga, the coordinator of the nothern corridor covering Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo, and Omar Haggag, the coordinator of Labito corridor covering Angola, Zambia and DRC presented plans for improving the logistics corridors in Africa to improve trade and bilateral business exchange with Netherlands.
The Northern corridor digital climate smart green lane for exports of perishables from Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda is a four year 30M Euros project coordinated by Trade Mark Africa supported by European Union and government of Netherlands. “Uganda is progressively overcoming some impediments to exports especially the work on food standards and food certification along with low cost funding, however the highest cost of logistics requires aggregate of the centres to pull produce from farmers at sustainable prices, dry or cool the food, process it, package it, transport it, and manage data for both the suppliers and Market, said Odrek Rwabwogo.
“We have got offers of land from district councils and leaders of Ibanda, Kisoro, Tororo, Mbale, Gulu and other locations that allow us drying, chilling and transportation capacity along with storage facilities, that is the only way we deal with insufficient and irregular supplies that undermine the country’s credibility as a sourcing region for good food products, Rwabwogo added.
PACEID now in its fourth year has raised substantial awareness of Uganda’s exports in the key markets of Europea, North America, Middle East,Asia attracting significant orders of food products and investments in coffee, simsim, cocoa, Vanilla, Milk, beef and many export products and also supporting low cost export funding through one of the committee’s sister agencies to many of the companies supplying value added and raw commodities to Canada, USA, China, Kenya, Rwanda, DRC, Saudi Arabia and other locations in the west and southern Africa.