REMOVAL OF BARRIERS MUST BENEFIT ECOWAS CITIZENS (PAGE 14)

THE National Co-ordinator of the Ghana Trade and Livelihood Coalition (GTLC), Mr Ibrahim Akalibilla, has asked ECOWAS governments to ensure that the removal of barriers on the trans-ECOWAS highway benefits the citizens of the sub-region through increased trade and not just serve as a means to get goods from other parts of the globe efficiently distributed within the sub-region.
He also called on the governments of Ghana and Burkina Faso, in particular, to harness the strengths of the private sector, as well as farmers, to develop a joint enterprise on tomato production and processing within the shortest possible time.
"We see the opportunity in the tomato trade that goes on between Ghana and Burkina Faso as expanding that space for people to transact business, a space that will provide a platform to open up other opportunities for engagement," he said.
Mr Akalibilla said this at a durbar at Po, organised by the GTLC and its counterpart in Burkina Faso, Organisation pour le Reinforcement des Capacite de Development (ORCADE), as part of this year's Regional Integration Week celebration.
The durbar was aimed at providing the platform for a purposeful discussion which would contribute to accelerate the processes of regional integration in the ECOWAS community, using Ghana and Burkina Faso as case studies.
Mr Akalibilla said that livestock development and processing, shea nut development and processing cultivation and processing of tomato, among others, presented many opportunities which could help transform the livelihoods of many, especially women.
Ghana's Ambassador to Burkina Faso, Mr Sahanun Mogtari, who represented the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and NEPAD, said that although ECOWAS had made giant strides towards integration in the past decade, a lot still remained to be done to avoid the marginalisation of the sub-region in today's competitive global economy.
He said it was imperative that countries in West Africa re-positioned themselves along the line of economic blocs, such as the European Union and the North Atlantic Free Trade Association, to deal with present global and economic problems which were further compounded by the rising fuel and food prices, leading to unrest
in some countries.
The Permanent Secretary of the National Commission for Integration of Burkina Faso, Mr P. Lonpo Jamario, called for more action to concretise, strengthen and consolidate the integration process in West Africa.
The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Alhassan Samari, said Ghana and Burkina Faso had a lot in common, so fostering good neighbourliness would be of mutual interest to the people of the two countries.
Mr Samari called on citizens of ECOWAS countries to do away with mistrust and suspicion if the cardinal objective of economic integration was to be achieved.
Mr John Akparibo, on behalf of Ghanaian farmers, said the absence of ready and secure markets, as well as of storage facilities, discouraged farmers from producing at full capacity. He also bemoaned the security interruption of the movement of persons and goods between Ghana and Burkina Faso which he described as a threat to regional integration.

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