Ministers responsible
for Trade in 16 African countries are meeting in Accra to conclude outstanding
issues to pave way for the full commencement of commercial trading under the
Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
The two-day meeting will feature the presentation of the AfCFTA facilitated and
guided trade initiative and the way forward.
It is a follow-up on the Ministerial Directive of the seventh Meeting of the
AfCFTA Council of Ministers in October 2021 that provided a legal basis for the
countries that had submitted their tariff schedules in accordance with the
agreed modalities to trade preferentially among themselves.
Rapid ratification
The Champion of AfCFTA, Mahamadou Issoufou, addressing the trade ministers and
other representatives at the opening of the meeting yesterday, called for a
rapid ratification of the AfCFTA Agreement for a smooth commencement of
commercial trading.
He recommended that the ministers accelerated the implementation of the AfCFTA
by forming implementation committees at the national level.
The ministers, he said, were also to assist the AfCFTA Secretariat to ensure
the successful hosting of a Summit on Industrialisation and the Extraordinary
Session of the AfCFTA.
The Summit on Africa’s Industrialisation and Economic Diversity with the focus
of implementing AfCFTA and the Extraordinary Session of the Assembly was
scheduled to be held in Niamey, Niger, from November 20-25, 2022 during the
Africa Industrialisation week.
As a step towards a meaningful trade under the agreement, Mr Issoufou said the
guided traded initiative had also been launched, describing it as “another
milestone.”
“Today marks a time of yet another additional milestone to be recorded in the
history of Africa’s economic integration.
“As a step towards commencing commercially meaningful trade under the AfCFTA,
the Secretariat has set this day to launch the AfCFTA Guided Trade Initiative.
“The objective of the initiative is to provide a proof of concept, highlighting
the readiness of an interested group of State Parties to start trading under
the preferences of the AfCFTA Agreement,” he explained.
Steady development
Mr Issoufou noted that there had been a steady development regarding the
ratification of the AfCFTA Agreement with 54 signatories.
Also, 44 ratifications had been recorded with Guinea-Bissau being the latest
country to deposit its instrument of ratification.
He was certain more ratifications would be reported before the end of the year,
and called on heads of States, ministers and partners to help increase the
number of ratification to achieve the formation of the single African market.
Implementing recommendations
The AfCFTA Champion mentioned that the AfCFTA Secretary-General had taken steps
to implement some recommendations by signing a memorandum of understanding with
Equity Group to deepen the economic integration of the African continent.
The partnership, Mr Issoufou indicated, would seek to implement the AfCFTA
Agreement and the AfCFTA Private Sector Strategy through the `Africa Recovery
and Resilience Plan’, which would focus on acceleration of economic recovery
and resilience in Africa in a post-COVID-19 environment.
He further explained that two institutions were to work on the private sector
economic recovery and resilience stimulus plan, which Equity Group had seeded
with a $6billion fund, focusing on the primary sectors of food and agriculture,
extractives, manufacturing and logistics, trade and investments, social impact,
health and environmental investments, as well as a technology enabled economy
to accelerate economic recovery and resilience of the African continent.
“The partnership will, among others, support the creation of 50 million jobs by
2025 and five million small medium enterprises (SMEs) will receive loans to
scale and grow, utilising tools of the AfCFTA Agreement and create additional
private sector lending with an envisaged loan book to be directed to
agriculture (30 per cent), manufacturing (15 per cent) and MSMEs (65 per
cent),” he said.
Source: graphic.com.gh