President and Chief Executive Officer of Imani Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe says the decision by government to sign the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) is in the right direction.<\/p>\n
The Minister of Trade and Industry, Haruna Iddrisu on Tuesday said at a press briefing that government will not be coerced by any civil society group not to sign the Economic Partnership Agreement.<\/p>\n
According to him a consultative meeting with various stakeholders on the EPA will be organized on Thursday to iron out some outstanding issues.<\/p>\n
Supporting the position taken by government, Mr Cudjoe said \u201cthe government is on the right path\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026The government has done all the economic calculations; the government has done all the economic diplomacy calculation, the government has done all the political calculations and decided that this is the noble path to take,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Cudjoe however, warned that government should desist from waiting for the ECOWAS region to all agree before it signs up to the EPA.<\/p>\n
\u201cWaiting for the region is probably not too fine an idea, because this is the same ECOWAS that has been at this idea of integration for years, [and has not been successful]\u2026\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
He opined that Ghana can on its own can sign the EPA agreement without the backing of ECOWAS. \u201c\u2026Trade occurs amongst countries, it could also occur between regions and countries as well; I am not too sure that we want to sacrifice the good things that will happen if Ghana signs unilaterally with EU [European Union] on the altar of a very sleepy ECOWAS,\u2019\u2019 he reiterated.<\/p>\n
Mr. Cudjoe urged Ghanaians to support the government to sign the EPA because its benefits to Ghana and the business community are enormous.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile the Private Enterprise Foundation (PEF) who disagrees with idea of government signing the EPA said it is interested in knowing the \u2018\u2019consensus position of Sovereign \u2019\u2019 Ghana.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Eyewitness News<\/strong>, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of (PEF), Nana Osei Bonsu said \u2018\u2019has Ghana done a thorough analysis of the EPA proposal from the EU to determine that this is what we as a country will benefit from and want to do\u2026.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n Osei Bonsu questioned whether the current discussions and dialogue about the benefits of the EPA are informed or not. \u2018\u2019Are we being informed of the proposals on the table; I have never seen an EU proposal other than what is written on the internet,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n According to him the benefits or detriments of EPA will rest on the private sector, he stated that it is the private sector that will suffer most.<\/p>\n He proposed that government dialogue with all the stakeholders to take a common decision before we go to the negotiation table with ECOWAS and the EU.<\/p>\n Ghana and the EU in 2007 initiated an Interim EPA to conform to the World Trade Organization requirements for preferential trade deals between WTO members.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n By: Evans Effah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President and Chief Executive Officer of Imani Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe says the decision by government to sign the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) is in the right direction. The Minister of Trade and Industry, Haruna Iddrisu on Tuesday said at a press briefing that government will not be coerced by any civil society group not to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":8355,"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":[],"tags":[43,38],"class_list":["post-13669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-foresight-medical-center","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13669","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=13669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}