Accra, Nov. 23, GNA - Ghana needs to radically transform its competitive supply capacity if she is to benefit from the reciprocal preferential trade arrangement under the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA).
Speaking at a day's workshop on the EPA, Mr Kwadwo Afram-Asiedu, Minister of Trade and Industry, said the country was unable to derive maximum benefits from its trade relations with the European Union even under the preferential arrangements because of poor productive processes.
'Our inability to respond to market access opportunities has been attributed to what have now come to be known as 91supply-side constraints' due mostly to inadequate capacity, stringent rules of origin and difficulty in meeting sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures and technical standards among other things.
Mr Afram-Asiedu said it was therefore essential to build the capacity of the private sector's competitiveness to enable the country to derive development gains from the EPA.
The kind of safeguard mechanism that we shall have and the accompanying development programmes to be instituted to assist us to overcome supply-side constraints on competitive production would go a long way to ensure the country's participation in the EPA.
=93Unless there are adequate resources to supplement our own to implement the target programmes designed to assist the adjustment process, it will be almost impossible to realize any of the development gains that the EU had been repeatedly saying will accrue from the EPA,=94 he added.
Mr Filiberto Ceriani Sebregondi, Head of Delegation of the European Commission in Ghana, said the EPAs will change the relationship of ACP countries with the EU from one of eroding dependency on tariff preferences to a partnership that would be based on bigger regional markets, ensure better rules for business and more market access.
=93EPA will build bigger and more dynamic regional markets that will attract new private investment 96 at least outside the traditional natural resources sectors. Larger regional markets mean more potential customers for both Africa and European businesses and this can help Africa compete for the attention that would otherwise focus on markets such as China or India,=94 he said.
