{"id":11204,"date":"2014-04-06T08:30:51","date_gmt":"2014-04-06T08:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=11204"},"modified":"2014-04-06T17:33:34","modified_gmt":"2014-04-06T17:33:34","slug":"signing-epa-will-benefit-ghana-sydney-casely-hayford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=11204","title":{"rendered":"Signing EPA will benefit Ghana &#8211; Sydney Casely-Hayford"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_7457\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7457\" style=\"width: 3110px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/613.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-7457 \" alt=\"Sydney Casely-Hayford\" src=\"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/613.jpg\" width=\"3110\" height=\"2074\" srcset=\"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/613.jpg 5184w, https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/613-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/613-1024x682.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 3110px) 100vw, 3110px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7457\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sydney Casely-Hayford<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Financial Analyst, Sydney Casely-Hayford says Ghana should sign the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) because its benefits far exceed its disadvantages.<\/p>\n<p>According to him the ECOWAS leaders should have signed the agreement when they met in Ivory Coast instead of holding off\u00a0the signing of the agreement last week, asking for time to resolve some &#8216;technical&#8217; issues.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018\u2019We should have signed and moved on, the benefits of signing this agreement far exceed [the disadvantages,\u2019\u2019 he said on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Critics and some\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/news.myjoyonline.com\/opinion\/2014\/April-4th\/actionaid-ghana-commends-ecowas-for-decisive-action-on-epa.php\">anti-EPA Civil Society Organisations<\/a>, including the Christian Council of Ghana and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) have all opposed the signing of the EPA.<\/p>\n<p>But speaking on <strong>Citi FM\u2019<\/strong>s news analysis and political programme, <strong><em>The Big Issue<\/em><\/strong>, Mr Casely-Hayford said assertions that the agreement will destroy the Ghanaian manufacturing and industry is false.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018\u2019I think that there is too much sentiment surrounding all of this; if you look at it from a purely business point of view, somebody is offering [Ghana and ECOWAS] the opportunity to get into a far bigger market than you can ever expect,\u2019\u2019 he noted.<\/p>\n<p>He said instead of looking at the negative sides, we should look at the positive aspects and \u2018\u2019grow our non-traditional exports as well as improving our export market\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>The EPA is an economic partnership agreement between the 16 West African states and the European Union (EU).<\/p>\n<p>The agreement will involve reducing and removing import duties of European manufactured goods and also see Europe remove quotas, duties on African exports to the EU.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>By: Evans Effah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Financial Analyst, Sydney Casely-Hayford says Ghana should sign the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) because its benefits far exceed its disadvantages. According to him the ECOWAS leaders should have signed the agreement when they met in Ivory Coast instead of holding off\u00a0the signing of the agreement last week, asking for time to resolve some &#8216;technical&#8217; issues. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":3938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-11204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}