Committee to oversee EPA established
A technical committee has been set up by government to engage its European counterparts and agree on the modalities for the implementation of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA).
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The committee, made up of officials of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Ministries of Trade and Finance, has been tasked to look at the harmonisation of the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) Common External Tariffs (CET), as well as tariffs to come into effect under the EPA.
The Manager in charge of Foreign Relations at the Ministry of Trade, Mr Mickson Opoku, made this known at a forum organised on the EPA by the Tema Branch of the Ghana Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) in Tema at the weekend.
The event brought together business owners and trade associations to deliberate on the impact the ratification of the EPA would have on businesses in Ghana and the West African sub-region.
The set-up of the committee, according to Mr Opoku, stemmed from the ongoing implementation of the CET which required the need for Ghana to have a representation at various levels of the EPA’s implementation.
“Once the EPA has been signed and ratified, the ministry must ensure there is a technical committee that will meet with their EU counterparts on how to proceed with the implementation agreement,” Mr Opoku stated.
The EPAs are intended to enhance regional integration and economic development in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.
The agreement is expected to provide market access opportunities within the European Union (EU) for agricultural and fisheries products from the ACP partners.
Infrastructure
While there are fears that infrastructure challenges could derail the efforts of Ghanaian businesses in this drive, Mr Opoku mentioned that the ministry had come up with an EPA accompanying strategy aimed to address the challenges.
“The ministry has anticipated infrastructure in the area of production, distribution and warehousing and these have been prioritised to be addressed,” Mr Opoku told the participants.
Similarly, he stressed that storage facilities for agricultural products had to be upgraded, noting that roads linking farm gates and ports, electricity, telecommunication and other physical infrastructure that would ensure a free movement of goods from points of production to points of export were all bottlenecks that the government was seeking to address.
The ministry, he suggested, had outdoored a document that defined how to address the infrastructure gap once the modalities on the EPA’s implementation were addressed.
He expressed the hope that Nigeria would also sign the agreement prior to the implementation stage.
Enabling environment
The Tema Regional Chairman of the Ghana National Chamber of Commerce (GNCC), Mr Isaac Barry, in an address lamented what he described as the lackadaisical attitude of many Anglophone West African countries towards the EPA.
He was of the view that whereas France was doing everything to help Francophone countries in the area of trade and agriculture, the same could not be said about the Anglophone countries.
Mr Barry also lamented that Ghana’s agricultural sector was no longer lucrative, giving room to many farmers to fold up and divert their focus into commerce.
He wondered why fruits such as watermelon and tomatoes that were produced in Ghana were often left to go waste owing to the lack of processing and storage facilities for them, yet, the same produce were being imported in cans into the country.
“It is high time the ministry comes out and creates the environment to entice people to invest in the sectors,” Mr Barry stated.
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