End October 2013 deadline for Ghanaian decision on EPA process
13 October 2013
In September Ghana’s deputy Minister of Trade Nii Lante Vanderpuje announced that the government would declare its final stance on the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the EU by the end of October 2013, when the report of a special committee set up by the government to examine the EPA process will be presented.
The Minister of Trade Haruna Iddrisu, meanwhile, has indicated that “Ghana’s declaration will be determined largely by the ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States] position on the trade agreement”, since the region favours a collective trade agreement. The Minister pledged that the Ghanaian government’s stance would take into account the position of Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. He maintained that “Ghana will not sign onto any agreement that will be inimical to our international economic interests and more importantly to the economic interest of Ghana.” The Minister highlighted the importance of protecting Ghana’s export interests. Press reports indicate that currently “Ghana exports at least 40%” of many of the country’s agro-food products to the European Union.”
The analysis in the press acknowledges that there have been calls for the Ghanaian government not to sign the EPA, which some analysts argue “is not in the overall interest of the country”. In September 2013, the Ghana Employers Association called on the government to “review inimical trade and investment policies if it is to salvage the ‘dwindling opportunities’ of indigenous businesses”. It was argued that “Ghana needs to critically re-examine its trade and investment policies, especially Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) as well as other protocols which have compelled us to open our markets to the influx of all kinds of goods and services.”
Press reports emphasised the importance of regional consultations on the future of the EPA process, confirming that the ECOWAS common external tariff (CET) will enter into effect in January 2014. Press analysis has highlighted the divergent policies of ECOWAS members on the use of trade policy tools in support of sector development programmes, with the Nigerian government most actively deploying tariffs and other trade measures alongside initiatives to stimulate investment in the development of national agricultural production in major sectors (cereals, sugar, rice and poultry).
In the context of Nigeria’s active use of tariff policy in support of sector development programmes, the Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN) has argued that the commitments on the ECOWAS CET, alongside “massive smuggling of imported frozen poultry products through Benin Republic”, could “cripple the poultry sectors if proper policies are not put in place”.
The Director General of PAN, Mr Onallo Akpa, maintained that the adoption of the CET, “coupled with the current agricultural agreements at WTO [and] the trade agreements between European Union and other countries, would lead to greater structural imbalances in poultry trade”. He called for current negotiations and agreements to be “critically looked into”, given their potential negative effects. It was further argued that public health issues arise as a result of the illicit cross-border trade in poultry parts that is taking place in the absence of an effective cold chain along these smuggling routes, which makes “the meat unfit for human consumption”.
PAN therefore called on the Nigerian government to urgently introduce policies that would “help cushion the effect of the CET”.
Editorial comment
The absence of complementary approaches to agricultural trade policy and the use of agricultural trade policy tools pose challenges for trade within the ECOWAS region. While the move towards a CET should in theory remove the incentive for illicit cross-border movements of products such as poultry parts, it is unclear whether the introduction of the ECOWAS CET will be accompanied by the harmonisation of other applied non-tariff trade measures (e.g. the use of import bans and introduction of special levies).
There are thus substantive challenges within ECOWAS – regardless of the policy choice made by the government of Ghana – with reference to the conclusion of the EPA process. It is unclear, for example, whether Ghana would be a preferred point of entry for goods ultimately destined for the Nigerian market given the absence of any shared borders, when Benin potentially offers an easy point of access to feed this illicit trade. Close policy harmonisation between Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire would appear much more important, in the context of the conclusion of the EPA process.
Any conclusion of the EPA process outside of a regional framework could, however, reduce the Ghanaian government’s room for manoeuvre in harmonising its trade policy implementation with its neighbours, unless this was based on the commitments related to the use of trade policy tools (e.g. import licences and a prohibition on the use of tariff-equivalent measures) enshrined in the Ghana–EU EPA.
