Ghana needs to increase representation on world trade groupings
Elmina (Central Region) 12 April 2002- Ghana has failed to secure a place among the leading exporters on the continent, a World Trade Organisation (WTO) annual report for the year 2000, has indicated.
The report puts South Africa at the top of a list of 15 African countries, including Nigeria, Kenya, Angola and the Sudan, which earned the continent a total of 144.7 billion dollars, during the year under review. Ghana's name, however, appeared on the list of importers placing 11th with her import bill of 3.1 billion dollars.
Mr Kofi Larbi, Acting Director, Multilateral Division of the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MOTI), made this known at a meeting of the 'Inter-Institutional Committee' (IIC) on multilateral trade issues, which opened at Elmina on Thursday.
The committee's membership comprises representatives of institutions like the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS), Ghana Standards Board (GSB), Ghana Export Promotions Council (GEPC), Private Enterprises Foundation (PEF) and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
The two-day meeting is to discuss ways of identifying issues that are of interest to the nation and how best it could meet her obligations within the WTO, the ACP/EU Cotonou Partnership and ECOWAS.
Mr Larbi expressed regret that the nation's exports were mainly targeted at the European markets and said it was imperative for her to diversify her export destinations to make the needed impact.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 12 April 2002- Mr Walter H. Kansteiner III, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, on Thursday said Ghana's certification to export textiles to the US under the African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) marked the beginning of the bond of lucrative relationship between both countries in the sector.
Mr Kansteiner said this when he presented Ghana's certificate to Mr Akwasi Osei-Adjei, Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, at a brief ceremony in Accra.
The presentation was made after Mr Kansteiner accompanied by Mr Peter Watson, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and Ms Nancy Jo Powell, US Ambassador in Ghana to pay a courtesy call on President John Agyekum Kufuor at the Castle, Osu.
Mr Osei-Adjei said AGOA had been in existence for some time now but it had been difficult for Ghana to take advantage. He, therefore, urged entrepreneurs in the textile sector to utilise the opportunity to increase productivity and incomes and reduce poverty in the sector. Ghana is one of 11 African countries to achieve the textile certification under AGOA and the first in West Africa.
Under AGOA, 35 African countries, including Ghana, could enjoy duty-free and quota-free trade status on virtually all exports to the US. In the case of textiles, each country must undergo an additional certification process to guarantee that the textiles were made in Africa.
Mr Kansteiner and Mr Watson are leading a delegation of six private equity investment fund managers to Ghana, South Africa and Kenya to identify foreign direct investment opportunities.
They are Zephyr Management, Modern Africa Fund Managers, Emerging Markets Partnership, African Fund Emerging Markets, Millennium Fund and ERL Services.
At the ceremony, Mr Watson also launched an African Housing Initiative under which OPIC seeks to support housing projects in sub-Saharan Africa. The standardisation of loan terms, documents, underwriting guidelines and collection of market data for investors and risk-sharing entities, would be undertaken under the project.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 12 April 2002- Over 100 hotel practitioners, policy makers and regulators are participating in a two-day international management workshop to enhance the capacity and boost the performance of hoteliers.
The workshop, which opened in Accra on Thursday, would also dwell on linking the hotel business to tourism development and to create a conducive corporate climate and culture to optimise quality and efficiency in the industry.
Senior Minister Joseph Henry Mensah in his address said the government was aware of the enormous potential of the hospitality industry and the important contribution that it could make to the country's socio-economic development efforts.
The government, he said, was, therefore, adopting special measures to help develop the sector. Mr Mensah said a major concern was the country's poor road network and gave the assurance that the government had secured the necessary funding to build major roads that linked Accra to other centres.
High on the agenda is the Accra-Kumasi and Accra-Yammoransa roads. Also to be tackled is the high spate of armed robbery in the country to ensure that tourists did not carry away any bad experiences to deter others from visiting the country.
In this, connection, Mr Mensah asked the practitioners to engage the services of highly qualified security personnel to avoid incidents that could impact negatively on their reputation. He also tasked managements of hotels to provide detailed development training for their staff to remove any traces of bad service that could hamper their quest for growth.
The Minister of Tourism, Madam Hawa Yakubu said the tourism sector was plagued with numerous problems, especially the lack of funds to carry out their development programmes.
Mr Charles Minor, Management Development Director of African Management Services Company (AMSCO), organisers of the workshop, said when given the necessary backing tourism could catch up with other sectors as the country's major foreign exchange earner.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 12 April 2002
Currency Buying Selling
US Dollar 7,566.64 7,753.00
Pound Sterling 10,864.18 11,135.63
Swiss Franc 4,538.85 4,647.40
Canadian Dollar 4,759.15 4,872.94
Japanese Yen 57.56 58.96
S/African Rand 674.36 688.78
Euro 6,665.14 6,827.49
CFA Franc 10.16 10.41
Naira 64.84 66.44
Ecowas/WAUA 9,357.50 --------
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Accra (Greater Accra) 12 April 2002-A research report on international trade has stated that the full potential of trade to reduce poverty could not be realised unless poor countries had access to markets in rich countries.
"Unfortunately, Northern governments (Governments of developed countries) reserved their most restrictive trade barriers for the world's poorest people," said the research report launched by Oxfam International, a confederation of 12 development agencies that works in 120 developing countries.
The report is known as "Rigged Rules and Double Standards." It said as a result, trade restrictions in rich countries cost developing countries around 100 billion dollars a year, an amount, which was twice as much as they received in aid.
Sub-Saharan Africa, the world's poorest region, therefore loses some two billion dollars a year, while India and China lost in excess of three billion dollars. The report said these were only the immediate costs and the longer-term costs associated with lost opportunities for investment and the loss of economic dynamism were much greater.
Trade barriers in rich countries, the report explained, were especially damaging to the poor, because they were targeted at the goods that they produced such as labour intensive agricultural and manufactured products.
It said because women accounted for a large share of employment in labour intensive export industries, they bore a disproportionate share of the burden associated with the lower wages and restricted employment opportunities imposed by protectionism.
Indicators of the Oxfam research, known as the Double Standards Index (DSI), looked at the worst offenders in damaging the interest of developing countries through trade barriers and revealed that no industrialised country emerged with credit.
"But, the European Union (EU) emerged as the worst offender, beating the United States by a short head." The report said the Index measured 10 important dimensions of rich-country trade policies, including average tariffs in textiles and agriculture and restrictions on imports from the least developed countries.
"We call it the Double Standards Index, because it measures the gap between the free-trade principles espoused by rich countries and their actual protectionist practices." The report explained that nowhere were the double standards of the industrialised countries more apparent than in agriculture.
Total subsidies to domestic farmers in those countries amounted to more than one billion dollars a day, the report said, adding that these subsidies, the benefits of which accrued almost entirely to the wealthiest farmers, caused massive environmental damage.
They also generated over-production, the resulting surplus of which were dumped on world markets with the help of yet more subsidies, financed by taxpayers and consumers. The report said the current trade system was indefensible and that no civilised community should be willing to tolerate the extremes of prosperity and poverty that were generated by current trade practices.
It also identified some flaws in WTO agreements saying, "The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual-Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement is an act of institutionalised fraud, sanctioned by WTO rules.
"...Developing countries will lose approximately 40 billion dollars a year in the form of increased licence payments." The report noted that imports were killing developing markets and communities and exports of primary commodities were declining.
For example, coffee prices had fallen by seven per cent since 1997, costing developing-country-exporters some eight billion dollars in lost foreign exchange earnings. The report quoted a respondent in Tanzania as saying, "the price of coffee is destroying this community."
However, some countries that appeared to be successfully integrating through trade were trapped in low-value-added ghettoes, and the growth in their exports had little impact on their levels of poverty. The report observed that trade could realise its full potential only if rich and poor countries alike took action to redistribute opportunities in favour of the poor adding:
"If Africa, East Asia, South Asia and Latin America were each to increase their share of world exports by one percent, the resulting gains in income could lift 128 million people out of poverty."
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Accra (Greater Accra) 12 April 2002- Mr Akwasi Osei-Adjei, Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, on Thursday admitted that Ghana's representation at world trade groupings left much to be desired but said the government was seeking to change the situation.
This would enable the nation to have a fair representation and to promote her interest on world matters. Ghana has only one person representative at the European Union level on trade matters and one person at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) level in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Deputy Minister said the government was seeking to change the trend and beef up representation at these and other international trade organisations. Mr Osei-Adjei was reacting to criticisms by speakers at the launch of research finding report on fairness in world trade.
The speakers included Dr Charles Abugri, Executive Director of Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC), a non-government organisation, Mr Tetteh Hormeku Adjei, Deputy Co-ordinator of Third World Network-Africa, a civil society organisation championing issues on global trading systems and Mr Edward Kareweh, Senior Industrial Relations Officer of the General Agriculture Workers' Union.
They criticised Africa's representation on world trade issues, which had prevented her from pushing forward fairness in agreements. Oxfam International, a confederation of 12 development agencies working in 120 developing countries to reduce poverty and promote fair trade, launched the report known as the "Rigged Rules and Double Standards".
The main finding of the research was that major trade partners did not treat African countries fairly. Mr Osei-Adjei noted that international trade in the past operated on comparative advantage in production but now the trend had changed to favour competitive advantage.
He said the new trade had shifted emphasis and changed world economies and made globalisation processes uneven. Trade for Africa now represented two struggles in the form of poverty and relations between those on the Northern and the Southern hemispheres of the globe, the Deputy Minister said.
He noted that Africa was faced with enormous global changes combined with further liberalisation. He said Ghana had come out with reform measures in trade to improve exports, adding that the government alone could not effect all the needed changes for the country to benefit from international trade agreements.
He, therefore, urged civil societies, trade unions and non-governmental organisations to help government push forward this agenda. Mr Sebastian Tia, a representative of Oxfam, in a welcoming address said the organisation stood to promote human rights, health, education and gender issues.
He said Oxfam also sought to increase market access for African countries, advocate removal of subsidies on agricultural produce, promote fairness in trade and ensure that reforms occurred at the WTO level.
Mr Tia noted that trade had the potential to get people out of poverty, but this was the opposite for Africa. Oxfam's aim, therefore, was to inform people to add their voice for change in global trade through research, lobbying and advocacy.
Mr Hormeku said most people saw trade as goods crossing borders, but "trade now cuts across even the collection of rubbish in a country." The agenda for Africa in the liberalisation of services needed to be geared toward making sure that money earned through investment stayed in the affected countries, he said.
Mr Hormeku said one of the most offending agreements by the WTO was the Trade Related Investment Measure (TRIMS), which sought to discourage the use of local raw materials in any investment destination country.
He described TRIMS as "one of the most outrageous laws" on trade and said it would allow investors to use cheaper subsidised agricultural products from Europe and other developed countries instead of the costly non-subsidised products in the affected country.
He stated that Africans wanted to be given the chance to develop their own rules but this was going to need a lot of effort in the face of so many agreements ranging from the United States African Growth Opportunity Act, the EU/ACP Cotonou Agreement and the WTO Agreements.
Mr Kareweh criticised some agreements of the WTO, especially that on the Intellectual Property Right, which, he said, was detrimental to agricultural producers in Ghana. He said small companies had limited capacity and, therefore, had to produce for export.
He identified two weaknesses in Ghana's industrial and agricultural sectors saying that both sectors lacked integration and the direct linkage required to absorb each other's needs.
For instance, government was promoting non-traditional exports but Ghana had no manufacturing base to absorb rejected okro meant for export. Mr Wim Olthof, Economic Advisor with the EU Delegation of the European Commission, blamed Africa for the unfair treatment in trade agreements.
He agreed with some of the speakers that there was the need for Africa to increase her representation and said no matter the mode of agreement, it behoved the developing countries to argue for the best of terms.
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