Ugandan firms benefit from ITC's TradeMap

Ugandan firms have begun to identify new export markets using Uganda TradeMap, launched in July 2002. The Uganda Export Promotion Board (UEPB) is offering this new market analysis service to Ugandan firms and trade support institutions through a partnership with ITC.

The UEPB has been instrumental in promoting the services in the country. Exporters and importers, trade support institutions and parliamentarians benefited from six half-day courses on how to use Uganda TradeMap as well as other ITC tools for strategic market research that provide global market information and analyse trade barriers. A one-hour presentation and question-and-answer session on national television and wide media coverage allowed firms throughout the country to familiarize themselves with these new tools.

Florence Kata, UEPB Executive Director, noted that, "When we explored how Uganda could participate in the African Growth and Opportunities Act [a United States preferential trade provision for sub-Saharan African countries], we used TradeMap to analyse the US market and I must say that even my ministers found it very useful in developing our strategy for entering the American market."

Uganda is the 14th country to obtain a national franchise to disseminate ITC's Interactive TradeMap and to get access, at the same time, to other ITC tools. Since July, six more countries and one region have joined ITC's TradeMap network: Benin, Burkina Faso, Indonesia, Kenya, the United Republic of Tanzania, the United States and the central Asian republics.

For more information about TradeMaps, contact Friedrich von Kirchbach, Chief, ITC Market Analysis Section, at vonkirchbach@intracen.org or visit
http://www.intracen.org/mas