..focus on bilateral relations

Accra, Oct. 5, GNA - Mr Tony Oteng-Gyasi, President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), has called for the suspension of the bigger regional economic integration bloc like ECOWAS and instead focus on bilateral trade relations.

He said, "Countries in the sub-region have performed worse under self-government than when they were under colonialism in the West Africa Region.

"After several years of efforts to integrate, we should know that more emphasis should rather be put on one-on-one or bilateral trade relations and move away from ECOWAS' several protocols, which seem not to work for us now," Mr Oteng-Gyasi said.

Speaking to commemorate activities marking the celebration of the Ghana-German Economic Association week in Accra on the theme: "The Future of Inner West African Trade and Regional Integration," he explained that it was important to begin the process of integration from building effective bilateral relations as a prelude to more sophisticated forms of integration.

He said the European Union for instance started with just six countries and today the number has grown to over 15.

The AGI president expressed the worry that as of today, only about 11 per cent of trade in West Africa was within the region whereas the EU had achieved about 70 per cent intra-regional trade.

He said, "The idea of integrating about 15 countries to achieve certain benchmarks was rather ambiguous. We can begin with small units and then move to more sophisticated form of unions".

Touching on some of the challenges, Mr Oteng-Gyasi mentioned the lack of unification of standards and practices of trade among member nations, poor road and rail infrastructure and the continuous heavy reliance on the import tariffs as major sources of government revenue as some of reason militating against the integration efforts.

He said another alternative, which he considered to be the best for ECOWAS would be to join UEMOA, the Francophone West African Economic and Monetary Union because it was more comprehensive and had better prospects.

Disagreeing with the AGI president's position, Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botchewey, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and NEPAD said ECOWAS was on course despite the myriad of challenges it was facing.

She said a lot of the time critics had focused on the problems and challenges of the integration effort forgetting that the ECOWAS had and was making some laudable achievements that needed to be recognized as well.

"ECOWAS has scored high marks in areas such as peacekeeping, free movements of goods and persons, promotion of intra-regional trade, promotion of trade fairs among others.

"We have some challenges but we should recognize the progress we are also making," Ms Botchewey said.

She said a lot of schemes and programmes had been adopted for the creation of a unified market, which included policies and means to achieve trade liberalization, monetary cooperation, free movement of persons, development of regional transport and communication networks and the promotion of regional economic stability through the harmonization of macro-economic policies. Mr Peter Linder, German Ambassador, said ECOWAS integration process had been slow in spite of the advantages of regional integration, which included larger market access, diversification opportunities and free flow of goods and persons.

He said regional integration was an essential prerequisite between the EU and ECOWAS for the successful implementation of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), which was expected to come to full force next year.

He explained that supports for regional dimension and for reforms favouring investments were key issues in the EU-EPA strategy and in the aid financing strategy.

He announced that the EPA negotiations would be a topmost priority for the German government when it assumed the presidency of the EU for six months in January 2007. 05 Oct. 06