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Faster and better access to Market Information for East Africa through eacexport.com

This month the business community in East Africa will be opening up to a new chapter of faster and better access to information on foreign markets. The Regional Information System for Exports (RISE) portal at www.eacexport.com that has been a year in the making will be launched in Dar es Salaam , Nairobi and Kampala at the end of August 2007.

The portal is a breakthrough in information processing and dissemination by East Africa 's Trade Promotion Organisations (TPOs). Accessing reliable business information has always been a challenge to many business enterprises, especially those in developing economies. Whilst digital divide between the developed and the developing world is narrowing, easy access to reliable, relevant and affordable market information remains an immense challenge.

Despite this challenge, businesses still need information to make critical decisions for them to prosper. More specifically exporters need information on topics such as market opportunities, market and product trends, buyer contacts, buyer requirements, price trends, market access requirements, how best enter an export market etc.

There are different sources of such information. Private firms publish such information often at prohibitive cost making it only affordable by businesses in the developed world. Traditionally, the source of such information in developing countries is from the trade support organisations.

Characteristically, trade or business support organisations, including ours in East Africa, have been providing information in a “reactive” rather than ”proactive” manner, maintaining reasonable databases with information but waiting for their clients to access and use their database. The information is also often provided in a basic form without value addition lacking accompanied, analysis and advice.

Realising all this, the three core TPOs - Export Promotion Council of Kenya, Board of External Trade of Tanzania and the Ugandan Export Promotion Board in collaboration with the Centre for Promotion of Imports from Developing Countries (CBI) have come up with a very pro-active solution: An effective and efficient online system to meet the foreign market information needs of exporters in the three countries. TPO staffs along with a network of Commercial Attaches from the three countries based in the respective countries' embassies have undergone extensive training offered by CBI, improving their skills in collecting, interpreting, analyzing and compiling information and feeding the information onto the RISE Portal. Once fed onto the system, the information is immediately viewable by exporters, right across the region. Information can get to the exporter even faster and even more tailored, thanks to a unique feature, a facility to send out customized email and SMS alerts that further speed up access to required information. Access to market information is further strengthened by a direct link that the portal offers into CBI's rich market information database as well as reputable company databases – Alibaba and Kompass.

The portal is an interactive platform where exporters will not only have access to market information but also be able to get expert advice from a pool of Export Coaches specialized in a range of fields such as financial management, quality management, packaging, insurance, export documentation etc. The Export Coaches have also gone through rigorous training by CBI on export marketing management. Blending capacity to find, analyse and compile information with resourceful networks of Commercial Attaches and of trained export management consultants, takes information a whole stride further in value to the exporter.

Jointly owned, jointly developed and jointly managed by the core TPOs in the three countries, the portal has a regional dimension that is unique in the world. Great gains are achieved from sharing of information between the three organisations that together have a much more extensive outreach to information sources, and moreover can offer so much by providing information about their own markets for their neighbouring countries giving a boost to intra-regional trade.

In short, RISE gives East African exporters a competitive edge, so why hesitate, go and have a look at www.eacexport.com.

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