Chief national counterpart:

Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)

Trade and Investment South Africa (TISA)

Cooperation arrangements will be established with support institutions, both private and public, as required by the respective activities foreseen under PACCIA/PACT. The core partner institutions will be represented in the local PACCIA/PACT Steering Committee that will oversee the implementation of the programme.

South Africa is one of the four (4) countries included in the pilot phase of PACCIA/PACT, together with Senegal, Ghana and Tanzania. PACCIA/PACT – South Africa covers a series of targeted high-priority activities identified during an ITC/TFOC programming mission carried out from 15–22 May 2003. The programme builds on past and ongoing trade related initiatives taken by  South Africa as well as on related external trade related technical assistance (TRTA) to the country.

PACCIA/PACT – South Africa will be implemented in two phases and envisages the following concrete results:

• Practical and basic export guides will have been prepared and diffused to the SME community through TISAs network of service providers across the country; these will cover: three Trade Secrets guides (‘The Export Answer Book’, ‘Export Quality Management’ and ‘E-commerce’) and a ‘Roadmap for exporting’;

• TISA’s market intelligence collection, processing and dissemination will have improved, both in qualitative and quantitative terms, also involving a more dynamic interface with related information sources;

• A detailed proposal will be available to streamline TISA’s business matching system and as a first step towards implementation, a Business Opportunity Desk will be installed;

• A training programme for government trade representatives and other foreign service officers carrying out commercial responsibilities at official posts abroad will use expertise from and adapt tools of the Canadian Foreign Service Institute;

• Networking opportunities will have been created for disadvantages groups in the business community, through facilitation of NAFCOC’s participation in the 3rd World Chambers Congress (WCC) in Quebec (Canada, September 2003), combined with contacts with a number of trade related institutions in Canada;

• At least 15 South African small and medium sized enterprises will have received action-based training in supply chain management for export delivery including plant-level advice. Trainers of relevant national institutions will be able to apply the training methodology;

• At least 10 South African enterprises will have benefited from the establishment of commercial contacts in Canada, leading to possible export sales, and training and support in the execution of a successful export campaign;

• Gender equity is a concern throughout the programme's activities, which have as target that one third of the beneficiaries of capacity building efforts at the institutional and enterprise levels are women;

PACCIA/PACTs Regional Initiatives (proposed for Phase II) will complement the country specific programmes, with a view to enhancing the programme's outreach. Regional activities might be carried out in different ways, including for example, through South-South cooperation, in which case South Africa could play an active role by sharing its trade development experience with other African countries and, also, as buyer of goods and services from other African countries.

Possible candidate themes for the regional initiatives include gender-focused trade training of trainers to support women entrepreneurs on their road to exporting, promotion of intra-African trade opportunities, intensifying networking among export promotion agencies, etc.