M’Bengue: One of the big weaknesses of Côte d’Ivoire is the fact that there is no national export strategy. What are the reasons? Trade in general is not embedded in the national development policy. We have no mainstreaming of such concepts. The second reason is that donors have always put stress on issues such as infrastructure, health and similar issues, which are important, of course, but do not take account of our fundamental trade problems. We are the world’s major producer of cocoa and our economy depends a lot on commodities, which carries a certain risk – prices go up and down like a yoyo – so it is important to have a national export strategy that tries to reduce this risk. What we are trying to now in Apexi, the trade promotion association, is to establish a network to stimulate government to establish an export strategy.

Donwahl: I think the main problem in Côte d’Ivoire is that the government and politicians haven’t seen exports yet as a promoter of development and they have not considered the private sector as a possible or main promoter of development. This is what has to be changed. On the other hand, the private sector has not yet been organized enough to stimulate that change in the government. The reason for that is that, as Mr. M’Bengue says, our economy depends a lot on products such as coffee and cocoa. If you look at these two products, the most important companies in that sector are multinationals. Very often multinationals don’t have an interest in national export strategy. They are maybe more interested in multinational export strategy. So they don’t participate in any kind of national strategy-making.

The private sector, especially the small and medium-sized companies, have to be more efficient to have a bigger role in the economy. National companies can help the government to establish a national strategy or at least be aware of the importance of having a national strategy for export. In that sense a network of trade promotion organizations such as Apexi, has been doing a good job for two years to try to pull it all together and make the issue important in the eyes of the policy-makers.

M’Bengue: We have a very important advocacy role, because one of our chief objectives is to improve what we call the export environment. That means we have to facilitate export procedure so as to reduce transaction costs. That’s very important. One of the aspects of advocacy is to try to create what I call the export culture. If we don’t have an export culture, it is very difficult to have a population of exporters. We have to put in the mind of the private sector that you can get revenue from exports. It must be an alternative in the development process.

Donwahl: There are many programmes in other countries that are working and could be applied to Côte d’Ivoire. The role of the trade promotion organization as a link between policy-makers and the private sector is very important: you have to build confidence between the two groups. Policy-makers have to understand that the private sector is a partner in trade promotion. In one of the sessions, we have seen the example of Ghana, which has about the same problems as Côte d’Ivoire with regard to exports and they have tried to create a trade promotion bank as part of the network to finance small industries and companies. This is one of the things that could be applied to us because the financial problems that small companies face are very constraining. It is a problem that government and the policy-makers alone cannot solve. Private banking has to understand that there is a role to play. Cambodia, the Philippines and Bancomext provided other examples.