THE GHANA Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) has initiated a move to train women in the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis on how they can easily trade on the international market.
This forms part of efforts to equip women entrepreneurs, especially those who are into agribusiness and textiles with relevant skills.
The 5-day training, organised in collaboration with the Trade Facilitation Office (TFO) of Canada, will also create sustainable trade partnerships for exporters from Ghana with Canadian and other foreign buyers.
The event will provide a unique and valuable platform for businesses to familiarise with the best practices around trade shows, steps in cross-cultural negotiations and factors affecting pricing in an export market, among others.
Ursula Tawiah, Zonal Officer of GEPA in the Western and Western North Regions, explained that the core mandate of the authority is to promote, facilitate and develop non-traditional export products.
Albert Kassim Diawura, a Deputy Chief Executive Officer of GEPA, said the training programme was part of GEPA’s efforts to groom exporters for easy access to external markets and ultimately to shore up exports.
He said international trade, unlike the local market with fewer restrictions, comes with a lot of demands including product certification, legal aspect and export documentation.
He stressed that it was important to keep exporters abreast with what pertained in other parts of the world so that they could produce to meet such demands.
“We realised that we have a lot of women who are doing well in the export trade business and it is important to build their capacity to enable them overcome the challenges in the international trade arena,” he noted.
Nelly Spio Baidoo, Principal Export Development Officer at GEPA, said the participants will be conscientised to do away with certain myths surrounding the export of products and equipped with all basic export information.
FROM Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi