Ghana must not sign EPA- Negotiator

Executive Director of the Centre for Public Interest Law, Dominic Ayine a member of the Ghana team that pushed for the initialing of an interim Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) has said that Ghana stands to lose if it goes ahead to sign an interim EPA as an individual state.

Speaking at a workshop on EPA for the media last Saturday, Dr. Ayine, a lecturer at the University of Ghana noted that it will be beneficial to negotiate with ECOWAS as a block.

He revealed that European Union (EU) negotiators prepared the text for the Interim EPA which was christened EPA Lite and that government negotiators had very little time to study the text.

Government hastily signed the Interim EPA to sustain preferential access to the EU market that was to expire in December 2007 with the end of the WTO waiver.

He, however describe the initialing of the Interim IPO as a prudent political decision as our refusal to initial could have adversely affected non-traditional export such as banana and pineapple.

Finally, Mr. Kingsley Ofei-Nkansah of the General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) also supported the fact Ghana sighed an EPA with a lot of shoddy issues at our peril.

The two agreed that Ghana will benefit more from free trade globally if we improved on our productive capacity.