The Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Manpower (BOCCIM), now Business Botswana, has introduced a new worldwide chamber of commerce service for its members, the Chamber Trust seal. Chamber Trust is a World Chamber Federation initiative that provides a traceable local presence for a company that is online through verification services of a relevant local, regional or national chamber of commerce, and in this case, BOCCIM.
The Director of International Networks and Partnerships at the Paris Chamber of Commerce, Georges Fischer, told Gazette Business that this is a framework of the private sector development program signed by the Botswana Government and the European Union, which one of the actions were to restructure BOCCIM to help it deploy services to small and medium-sized entreprises (SMEs). He noted that this service targets SMEs that are interested or are engaged in international trade.
Fischer said they will train BOCCIM staff, which will then impart the knowledge to the SMEs, saying they will also help with the use of the Information and Communications Technology in business.
The verification seal allows companies around the world to easily find potential new business partners whose existence, profile, products and services have been verified by a Chamber of Commerce.
Chamber Trust is regarded as the first real world wide business-to-business trust seal dedicated to international trade. Through the validation by a Chamber of Commerce of objective information about a given company and through the publishing of a database of beneficiary companies on the existing World Chambers Network site, these companies are given exposure and impact on the global market.
“We will use this to verify whether the company is real and you can enter into negotiations with it. This is a very important marketing tool for companies interested in international trade,” Fischer said, noting that on Tuesday last week they had their first workshop on how to use the internet on international trade. “We already have our first company in Botswana. The idea is to ensure that BOCCIM knows how to speak business, we bring to BOCCIM the knowhow to go and better SMEs,” he said.
BOCCIM has indicated that Chamber Trust is a trusted search engine, exclusively focused on companies, their activities and product lines. The organisation said apart from the extra ‘peace of mind’ for the visitors to a sealed company’s web site, Chamber Trust incorporates four main benefits for the company with the Chamber Trust seal, which are; to provide the impact and recognition created by verification from qualified Chambers of Commerce, allowing a company to stand out; it promotes the company’s new products and services regularly with a more comprehensive search engine; it gives global exposure through the World Chambers Network Site, and also includes a free publishing service in the Global Media Room that allows companies to increase their visibility even more.