By Anthony Adongo Apubeo
Bolgatanga, Aug 15, GNA – Business owners and operators have been urged to diversify operations and add value to their products to reposition themselves properly to harness the benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
The agreement reached in 2018 by heads of states of African Union, the AfCFTA seeks to break trade barriers, create a single market for African businesses and encourage intra-trade among African countries.
The market is projected to be the largest single market in the world with a population of about 1.3 billion and expected Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of about US$3.6 trillion.
So far, 54 countries have signed onto the Agreement with 47 countries ratifying the protocols and working to start the implementation of the free trade agreement.
Speaking at a regional conference on the National AfCFTA policy framework and action plan as part of the implementation of the AfCFTA, held at Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region, Mr Divine Kutortse, Enterprise Support and Trade Finance Specialist, National AfCFTA Coordination Office, urged local businesses to leverage AfCFTA to increase trade.
He said Africa was rich and all raw materials needed for the manufacturing and production of finished products in Western world were found in African, however, Africa had benefited little from trade.
The reason was that, he said, Africa countries continued to export raw materials without adding value to the products and did not also ensure free trade among each other which needed to be changed.
“Intra-continental trade in Europe is around 60 percent, in North America it is about 40 percent, in Asia, it is about 59 percent, but when it comes to Africa, it is about 14 to 16 percent and because of that, we do not enjoy economies of scale and we cannot develop like this,” he said.
Mr Kutortse noted that many countries were using the resources of Africa to develop because they could trade among themselves and added that the AfCFTA was a game changer in the African trade industry and businesses to add value to their raw products to harness full benefits.
As a country, Mr Kutortse, explained that deliberate efforts had been made to support businesses and companies to be in a better position to take advantage of the bigger market and make greater impact and the framework and action plan provided clear roadmap to removing all barriers to free trade to encourage diversification and competitiveness.
“We have a market expansion project and what we seek to do is to assess export readiness of companies and provide the requisite support that they need so that they can maximise their production and take full advantage AfCFTA” he added.
Alhaji Yakubu Yussif, a Senior Advisor in charge of Monitoring and Evaluation of the National AfCFTA Coordination Office, noted that AfCFTA had huge potential for the growth of trade in Africa and Ghanaian businesses needed to be prepared to benefit from the offers.
He said apart from sensitising the business community on how to increase production, the conference was to also help stakeholders in the region to identify products that the region had comparative advantage over and increase production and add value to such product to benefit from the AfCFTA.
Mr Stephen Yakubu, the Upper East Regional Minister, noted that the location of the region was strategic and had the potential to attract bigger markets from the Sahelian region and landlock countries and urged the business owners in the region to take advantage of the African Market to increase trade.
GNA