*BREAKING NEWS*: AFCFTA Policy Network-Ghana & Diaspora Pays Courtesy Call to Ghana's Ministry of Trade and Industry

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


AFCFTA Policy Network-Ghana & Diaspora Pays Courtesy Call to Ghana's Ministry of Trade and Industry 




ACCRA,Ghana-27 Nov, 2019 -- Ghana's Minister of Trade and Industry, Hon. Alan Kyeremateng, has called on the Afcfta Policy Network to bring the CSO community to the same level of understanding on issues around the African Continental Free Trade Area  (AfCFTA).


The Minister was speaking to Executive members and top management, which included Executive Director Louis Yaw Afful; Deputy Executive Director Emmanuel K Bensah Jr; and Head of Legal & Secretary to Board Chair John Darko, when they paid a courtesy call to the Ministry on 25 November.


On the specific dates of the Afcfta negotiations, Kyeremateng offered some benchmark dates to help guide the Network on how it should prepare itself. He explained that the final schedule for tariff concessions would be at the African Union Summit in February 2020. With 28 member States having ratified the agreement, Member States have been given up to July 2020 to ratify the agreement. As regards Rules of Origin (RoO), they should be also ready by 2020, with the Secretariat being fully-operational by 30 March, 2020.


The African Union Commission and the government of Ghana are collaborating to implement the roadmap for this to happen.


The Minister made a number of recommendations to the Network, including the need to organize themselves frontally. Kyeremateng explained that there must be a distinct role for CSOs to be involved in the Afcfta process, drawing attention to how discussions at the World Trade Organization in Cancun back in 2005 failed precisely because there was no distinct role for them.


One of his key recommendations was for the Network to always keep abreast with content around the Afcfta negotiations, and that his team at the Ministry of Trade and Industry would be ready and willing to assist any time. Minister was concerned that everyone is now talking Afcfta, and so the conversations and discussions around it had to be managed well.


The Honourable Minister commended the Afcfta Policy Network-Ghana and Diaspora for being the most largely-othanized Network championing the cause of Afcfta.



Issued by:


E.K.Bensah Jr 

Media & Outreach Coordinator 

Afcfta Policy Network-Ghana & Diaspora Secretariat 

10, Kigali Avenue

East LEGON

Accra

Mob:+233.268.687.653 / +233.233.311.789

   

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