(FTA) which facilitates export diversification, enhanced competitiveness, inclusive growth (with greater participation of women, youth and persons with disabilities), movements of goods and services and macroeconomic convergence within the regional integration arrangements and promote economies of scale. Experience suggests that the best development outcome for SADC countries will be achieved by a combination of increased value chain participation with simultaneous upgrading. Participation in value chains may start at regional level and graduate to the global level. Within this context, the key challenge for corporate and government policy makers is to identify and prioritize entry points into value chains, as well as tasks that can be undertaken competitively and how they might be shared within value chains in the region. Deeper regional integration is an essential pre-requisite for the development of regional value chains and integration in global value chains. Close public-private collaboration is pivotal. The industry 'discovery' process in value chain policymaking is heavily reliant on close collaboration between the two main actors to remove the infrastructural, institutional and financial constraints to value chain development, and to encourage investment by private sector players. Central to attracting more targeted investment is the access which a regional market will provide, supporting – as it must – a far greater advantage in its economies of scale. SADC Member States have committed themselves to investment-led trade and regional economic and industrial integration. This also requires addressing the many physical and soft barriers to investment-led trade. From an implementation perspective, the emphasis therefore needs to shift to some of the microeconomic elements underpinning future growth, with a particular emphasis on moving up regional and global value chains supported by regionally coordinated procurement; targeted domestic and foreign investment; technology transfer; skills development; and the development of a friendly investment and regulatory environment. Specific investment and industrial opportunities emerge from integrating value chains and ensuring specialisation across the region. Judicious and strategic development of domestic and regional value chains will also allow supply companies to increasingly explore higher value-added export opportunities and enter into global value chains. The investment opportunities that arise from the regional value chain work will need to be underpinned by a significantly ramped-up focus on industrial finance and incentives, particularly with the strengthening of the role of national and multilateral development finance institutions (DFIs) to leverage and secure investment in the productive sectors of national economies, and in catalytic projects that facilitate regional trade and industrial integration. 5 Vers. 11.03.2017