Ghana Calls For Fairness In Trade Relations

Accra, Ghana (PANA) - Ghana Monday underscored the need for fairness, equity and justice in international trade relations to justify the reforms taking place in the emerging economies.

It also kicked against established institutions, such as the World Trade Organisation and major trade partners, creating tariff and non-tariff barriers that do not only stifle emerging economies but end up crippling them completely.

These were some of the sentiments expressed by Ghanaian participants at a round-table discussion between members of the UK branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Ministry of Trade and Industry and its umbrella bodies from Ghana Export Promotion Council and Ghana Investment Promotions Centre, Private Enterprise Foundation and National Board for Small Scale Industries.

However, it emerged that Ghana did not have a reliable data on trade statistics and has serious problems entering the European Union market with its finished products.

For example, neither the UK nor the EU markets have Ghana's award-winning range of chocolates.

Whereas raw materials from Ghana and other African countries enter the EU market free, they attract more than 200 percent tax each time value is added.

Dan Abodakpi, Ghana's deputy minister of Trade and Industry, said the UK is the country's largest and strongest trading partner as well as the single largest investor in the economy.

He noted that Ghana has over the years undergone some painful and drastic reforms "under which we are still struggling and hope that through this partnership we can share ideas on how to progress."

"But recent developments on the international market have proved quite worrying to some of us," he added. "The continued decline in cocoa and gold price, our major exports, have proved to be more hurting than our efforts can sustain. Indeed the gold sales and fall in other commodity prices put our efforts in real jeopardy."

Abodakpi said the liberalisation of the international market is putting Ghana at a disadvantage. He added that the country is interested in the Lome IV Convention, but stressed that agreements signed should not be discarded by the big, rich countries to the detriment of the smaller ones within the ACP community.

"Like the WTO, the whole thing is now becoming like a club of rich nations, where the practice is 'you say what is on your mind, but we will do what we want'," he said.