By Godwin Oritse

The Economic Community of West Africa States, ECOWAS, is the least integrated region in the world in terms of cross border trade, a report by the Borderless Alliance group has said.

According to the report, the non- application of ECOWAS directives relating to free movement of goods and people,    ECOWAS Trade Liberalization Scheme, ETLS, and the    Common External Tariff, CET, are some of the factors responsible for the low level of trade integration in the region.

Other factors militating against trade in the region include the high cost of transport &  logistics, Long delays at ports and borders, harassment along transit corridors,  mainly from uniformed services and corruption.

Speaking at a one day workshop on dissemination and launch of the ECOWAS Trade Liberalization Scheme handbook, Mr Justin Bayili, Executive Secretary, Borderless Alliance said that while Europe recorded 71 per cent in intra-regional trade, Asia recorded 53 per cent, South America 48 per cent against 12 per cent recorded by the ECOWAS region.

Bayili disclosed that East Africa is more integrated than its West African counterpart citing Customs inter-connectivity for the success so far recorded in East Africa.

He said, “We want to make West Africa a borderless border, East Africa is more integrated than West Africa.

“In international trade, there are no restrictions but standards must be met, the same best practices on transit that are applicable in East Africa must be applicable in West Africa.

“Burkina and Togo are inter-connected, Burkina- Cote Ivoire is also inter- connected and this has reduced the cost of trade between these countries.”

He explained that lack of professionalism amongst operators in the ECOWAS trade corridor has also been identified as a problem.

Bayili also noted that some of the issues affecting the ETLS are national issues adding that they must be addressed by national administrations.

He stated: “We must work assiduously to reduce these unnecessary costs by eliminating all the barriers to trade and make our products more competitive in the international market.

“Removing obstacles to intra-regional integration in the ECOWAS    sub-region would be particularly beneficial to the small scale traders that conduct cross border commerce within the sub-region.

“The potential benefits include food security, job creation, poverty reduction, increased tax revenues for authorities and long term development outcomes.”

Bayili disclosed that East Africa is more integrated than its West African counterpart citing Customs inter-connectivity for the success so far recorded in East Africa.

Truefaith:
The God of the universe warns against observing times in the following verse of the Bible:

Leviticus 19:26
Ye shall not eat any thing with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantment, nor observe times.

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https://www.thetruechristianfaith.com/william-kumuyi-teacher-of-falsehood/

Between the Author of the Bible and Mr Kumuyi, who do you think we should believe?

Pentecostalism is witchcraft.


The best of the Pentecostals is still a witch.

Or11:
We know that already when the majority of the people still live In poverty. Opening up our boarders is a good idea but we are not yet ready for that as the unemployed will use the opportunity to commit atrocities such as drug importation, human trafficking, smuggling of contrabrand or even immigrating to neighboring countries illegally.

What we need to focus on is not even providing jobs but training people to be self employed in various fields. People should have to queue to buy food at Resturants or wait at the mechanics for long hours, etc. Trained self employed people can create jobs for other unemployed citizens.

Blue3k:
Instead of ECOWAS chasing a single currency they should fix the trade integration issue by 2020. ETLS after all these years isnt having much effect after all these years. Its mainly because of each countries individual implementation of the rules. There should be more uniformity to the rules if possible.



Where does their intra-region trade stand?

vioment:
I believe this analysis or assessment or conclusion. How can west africa trade when all we do in west africa is the nigerian style which is buy from any industrialized or industrializing world, and then resale. Am sorry but that is not real trade. West Africa also suffers the incompetence that nigeria suffers which are light issues, security issues, health issues, infrastructural issues, rule of law issues, and honesty issues.

West Africa happens to be the most resourced region in Africa but the poorest and the most incompetent. The worst is that Nigeria is the leader of west Africa, which is the worst of any regional leader anywhere in the whole wide world; and to make it worse than it is, nigeria is not even bothered by the backwardness that we exhibit on an hourly basis. Instead of cooperating to rise together, they are busy doing nonsense everyday.

cr7lomo:
Wherever u see a black man settlement, just know that greed and wickedness thrives... They hate progress

cr7lomo:
Wherever u see a black man settlement, just know that greed and wickedness thrives... They hate progress

seunfly:


Two major giants in west africa(Nigeria and Ghana) are too careful of opening their borders because of job loss and they also sign individual trade agreement with out consideration to others, for instance Nigeria was being careful to sign some trade agreement with China, USA and EU but Ghana quickly signed it because of aid and international political gain. Nigeria has been kind to other west African niehbours but they turn their countries to dumping ground for foreign goods which in turn kills Nigeria industries, imagine the gain we have made in rice, vegetable oil, tomatos paste, noodles, pastas, furnitures even automotive industries, benin Republic has been sabotaging those gains for more than 30yrs by acting as a transit route into Nigeria until last four years when this government took a strong stands on it. For west africa to have serious trade integration, all the countries must have a clause that prevent selfish and individual decisions that will sabotaged job creation and industrial capacity within the region.

seunfly:


Two major giants in west africa(Nigeria and Ghana) are too careful of opening their borders because of job loss and they also sign individual trade agreement with out consideration to others, for instance Nigeria was being careful to sign some trade agreement with China, USA and EU but Ghana quickly signed it because of aid and international political gain. Nigeria has been kind to other west African niehbours but they turn their countries to dumping ground for foreign goods which in turn kills Nigeria industries, imagine the gain we have made in rice, vegetable oil, tomatos paste, noodles, pastas, furnitures even automotive industries, benin Republic has been sabotaging those gains for more than 30yrs by acting as a transit route into Nigeria until last four years when this government took a strong stands on it. For west africa to have serious trade integration, all the countries must have a clause that prevent selfish and individual decisions that will sabotaged job creation and industrial capacity within the region.

Blue3k:


Source: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2019/03/west-africa-the-least-trade-integrated-region-in-the-world-report/