"Don’t Sign EPAs"
Daily Guide, Ghana
"Don’t Sign EPAs"
By Charles Nixon Yeboah
1 December 2008
Trade sector advocacy bodies such as the Ghana Trade Livelihood Coalition and Actionaid Ghana as well as some civil society groups have renewed their call on government not to sign the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the European Union.
The groups however urged government to sign a trade agreement that will prevent free imports from Europe, since any false move could destroy the infantile manufacturing industry and the agric sector. The new deadline for the agreement is December 2009.
“It is not that we don’t want our governments to trade with Europe but what we are saying is that we want a preferential treatment that will favour us”, Christable Phiri, Programmes Officer of TWN Africa said.
Ms Phiri added that the signing of the EPAs in its present state will push out local producers from the market and therefore make them redundant.
“It will shock you that imported milk will be cheaper than the local one since production and supply chain costs will be higher.”
Ghana and Cote d’lvoire signed an interim agreement, EPA-lite in December 2007, a situation that enabled the two countries continue exports of local products to Europe.
This was due to the expiration of the Cotonou Trade Agreement in December last year. The EPA-lite will provisionally allow 80 percent of some European goods into the Ghanaian market duty-free and quota-free while the country will continue to have 100 percent access to the EU market. Ghana will also continue to impose tariffs on items described as sensitive products such as textiles, agricultural products imported from Europe as well as items that can be produced by the country’s manufacturing sector.
Speaking on “Gender, EPAs and Trade Policy Governance”, Tetteh Hormeku, Project Coordinator, TWN, said if the agreements were signed, that would mean taking the women out of the retail business as many giant multilateral companies would take over the sector.
He added that 70 percent of the trade of women in the ACP bloc was not exported, implying that even if the EPAs were signed, it would not benefit women traders on the ACP bloc.
