Carraparel feuds with BITC, threatens to relocate
Isaac Pinielo | Friday November 18, 2016 14:37
Carraparel, which is the only local textile and clothing company that has been exporting to the US under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), is also complaining of other factors that it says have made doing business in Botswana difficult.
Due to the challenges it says it is facing, the company indicated that it might relocate to the mountain kingdom, which has to an extent been one of the largest beneficiaries of AGOA with around 80% of their textile and garment exports going to the US.
According to Carraparel’s production manager, Teddy Kamalata most recently the company has been struggling to get an AGOA export licence because of the bad state of the factory building that it operates from.
“Recently, we have been failing to satisfy the requirements of the export readiness assessment due to the bad state of the building we are renting,” he said.
The export readiness assessment is a set of questions designed to assess how prepared a company is to begin exporting to the US.
The test is designed to identify weak areas in a company’s planning so they can be redressed before commencing with the implementation of an export strategy.
BusinessWeek has established that Carraparel occupies 7,000 square metres of a building that is owned by BITC.
Kamalata said they have pleaded with the BITC to carry out maintenance work on the building in order for it to meet the requirements of AGOA, but to no avail.
“The landlord is delaying in carrying out maintenance and that is putting us at a disadvantage for exports,” he said.
Because of the loss the company is incurring, he said they might be forced to close operations and relocate to Lesotho where he said the trading environment is more conducive.
The company, which has been operating in Botswana since 2003, once employed about 2,000 people, but it has now since scaled down to about 300 employees.
When contacted for comment, the BITC confirmed they are aware of the maintenance issues raised by Carraparel.
“They raised the issue of the cracked floor and we are working with the maintenance company and our resident engineer to assess the situation,” BITC executive director, Reginald Selelo told BusinessWeek.
In addition to the problems with the building, Kamalata said they encounter difficulties in getting skilled personnel from outside the country because of government’s refusal to issue foreign workers with permits.