Private sector agrees to SADC regional committee

The primary result of the recent Southern African Development Community (SADC) private sector meeting in Gaborone was the rejection of the idea of a Private Sector Council being formed within the SADC organisation, as had been recommended at earlier meetings, according to information released to FTW by Barney Curtis, executive officer of the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations (Fesarta). The meeting was designed to agree on how the private sector regional associations could best interact with SADC because some did not have good working relationships with the body, although Curtis assured FTW that this was not the case with Fesarta. The members cast aside the idea of the council as being too costly. It also decided that a more appropriate answer was a steering committee comprising the regional private sector associations. The members agreed that this should be set up. Oswell Binha, president of the Association of SADC Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Asci), agreed to be the interim chairman of the committee until the next meeting. This will formally constitute the committee, and is due to be held in either Harare or Johannesburg on June 10-14. It was then proposed that the chairman should have a person in one of his company offices, and an administrator for the committee would be appointed to staff that office. This administrator would be funded by contributions from members, with initial support from the German donor agency, GIZ, which also organised and funded the Gaborone indaba. GIZ was tasked with drawing up a draft letter of intent covering the decisions taken at the meeting, which was to be circulated to members to give input. The members are then to sign the finalised letter of intent.