Trade Information

Trade information and Statistics at your finger tips - Trade Map and Product Map

With efforts towards diversifying Botswana economy intensifying on daily basis, many people within the business community , trade policy analysts and BEDIA are faced with a number of questions such as,

• What is the structure of world market for a product? what are the trends?
• With which countries does my country currently trade?
• How can we upgrade and diversify our exports?
• Who are our main competitors in the world markets?
• Are we gaining or losing market?

These and many more questions related to trade can easily and rapidly be answered here in Botswana as a result of efficient on-line tools developed by the International Trade Centre in Geneva. These on-line tools for trade analysis are Trade Map, Product Map, Market Access Map and Investment Map. They were launched officially in Botswana in March 2004.

Trade Map

Trade Map provides on-line access to a database on product trade flows and market access barriers for international business development. It presents indicators on export performance, international demand, alternative markets and the role of competitors from both the product and country perspective. Trade Map features among others:

• Analysis of Present export markets
• Pre-selection of priority markets
• Overview of competitors in Global and specific markets
• Review of opportunities for product diversification

Register for Trade Map Member Login

Product Map

Market analysis is very crucial for international business development. Product Map portal comes in handy in answering questions on market targeting and the characteristics of those markets. This portal has three main sections as follows,

• Market Positioning tools-what markets should we target?
• Market Intelligence tools-what are the characteristics of those markets? and
• Networking tools-How do we establish relationships within markets?

Through these facilities, Product Map provides users with extensive international trade data covering product sectors including over 5,300 products classified in 3 tiers of Harmonized System (HS).

Register for Product Map Member Login

Market Access Map

Market Access Map is an interactive database of tariffs and market access barriers.It contains the market access conditions applied at the bilateral level by over 170 importing countries to the products exported by over 200 countries and territories. Market Access Map allows users to analyze the protection of any geographic grouping and sectoral aggregation. It also offers the possibility of simulating tariff reductions using various negotiation formulae.  Market Access Map aims to enhance market transparency, support international trade promotion, and to facilitate the analysis of related trade policy issues.

There is however another portal called Country Map which addresses strategic market research from a country perspective and it is available free of charge on ITC's Internet Web site http://www.intracen.org . This portal includes a country's trade performance index, National Export Performance, National Import Profile etc.

International Trade Centre through BEDIA is making these tools freely available and accessible to enterprises in Botswana. These tools will help keep our enterprises informed and up to date on the latest market requirements, market Access, Import sourcing opportunities and most importantly it will provide the much needed trade flow statistics for more than 180 countries of the world.

For more information and registration to use the two Portals, contact:

Research Department - BEDIA
Tel: (267) 3181931
Fax: (267) 3181941