African Trade Ministers Meet Over EPA Trade Issues
By Gideon Sackitey, ACCRA

Accra, October, 8, Ghanadot.com – For the first time, ministers and senior officials from over 40 African countries, the African Union and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) will convene at the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Africa next week to deliberate on state of the regional integration agenda.

High on the agenda is the Economic Partnership Agreements, which the European Union Commission Council expects the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries must sign by December 31, 2007.

They will examine the latest developments in the WTO negotiations on the matter as well as the discussions on the EPA with Europe and assess Africa's realistic expectations and outcomes from these global trade talks that seem to be bugging the minds of African countries for more than five years.

Equally important subjects on the table for the Ministers 5th Meeting of the Committee on Trade, Regional Cooperation and Integration, which takes place in Addis Ababa from 8-10 October, would be to address Africa's integration challenges at the national, sub regional and continental levels.

Ghanadot contacts in Addis Ababa said particular attention will be paid to the issue of intra-African trade, which remains very low at not more than five per cent. In that regard, delegates will discuss how to overcome the key infrastructure and policy hurdles to improving trade within Africa and provide practical suggestions on how to significantly increase intra-African trade in the short and medium term.

Another critical issue of concern is the lack of progress in the international trade arena because trade with the outside world continues to remain a major component of Africa's total trade.

Personally, I am glad that something positive was happening on the EPA front especially after learning two weeks ago that the sub-regional body was not united on the way forward. Nigeria did not want to go along with the signing; Ghana was undecided, so undecided that their officials who were to be in concept and position meetings were never available and Cote ‘d Ivoire another big power in the sub-region was not organized.

The rest of the sub-regional body members who are considered least developed countries under the EPA and have the EBA – Everything But Arms agreement – were just on the fringes.

Trade and industry players told Ghanadot in Accra that it was refreshing though to hear that somehow officials on the continent are beginning to think and waking up to a mind of their own instead of waiting for directives in the form of conclusions of winding EU sponsored meetings either in Brussels

Mr Tetteh Hormeku, a member of the Third World Network, a civil society group told Ghanadot that it was important for African leaders to reject the EPA’s outrightly.

“It is very cleat that the EPA’s are not good for us. It would ultimately open our markets 100 per cent to European goods and up to 80 per cent of ours onto their market, but there is a catch, he added. “They EU have huge subsidies on their products and farm products that will make their goods so cheap that it would wipe out our infant industries in no time.”

He also noted that the EPAs pose a number of policy challenges including restructuring of indirect tax systems, reduction of most favored nation tariffs (MFN), liberalisation of service imports on an MFN status basis and related regulatory reforms in the services sector, and liberalisation of trade in both goods and services within the regional trading blocs in SSA.

The EU disagrees on this and claims that under the EPA’s are goods from both ends will enjoy reciprocal treatment.

To make us in ACP countries believe in the talk of the rich states, the EU and US in particular must honour the commitments they made at the last Ministerial Conference in Doha. They must also adopt the GSP Plus being advocated by the ACP states.

The WTO must examine its woeful record and rethink the damaging free trade mandate on which the EPA’s are based. The fact is that the free trade concept creates a jungle situation where only the fittest survive in the context of competition between weak and more established nations; the result can be anybody’s guess. It must be careful not to implement the divide and rule tactics as the EU Trade Minister has shown in recent times, even though some think and beleieve it is a good beginning.

Gideon Sackitey, ACCRA, October 8, Ghanadot.com





 

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