Namibia overtakes SA in US-bound textile exports

JOY ORLEK
NAMIBIA HAS started to make inroads into the clothing export market to the US thanks to AGOA (Africa Growth and Opportunity Act), which in 2002 helped induce Malaysian company Ramatex to set up a large, vertically integrated textile mill outside the country’s capital Windhoek.
The Trade Law Centre for Southern Africa reports that two years later, Namibia is the seventh largest (sub-Saharan African) clothing exporter to the US. According to quota data for the month of October 2004, Namibia shipped the fifth largest volume of AGOA-eligible clothing to the US, ahead even of South Africa and Mauritius.
Never before known as a producer of garments for the export market, the country’s US-bound exports for the
9-month period to September 2004 were worth US$ 48m (R288m), up 160% in $-terms over the corresponding period in 2003.