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EU official confident of better Ghana-EU economic ties

Xinhua, January 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

A senior official of the European Union (EU) on Wednesday expressed the confidence that the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) will enable Ghana to expand its strong economic ties with Europe.

Ambassador William Hanna, head of the EU Delegation to Ghana, said as the long-standing relationship between Europe and Ghana was evolving, the EU wanted to focus more on trade and investment because it believed that increased trade and better integration into global value chains would boost economic development in Ghana and the West African sub-region.

Speaking at the Ghana Economic Outlook and Business Strategy forum in Accra, Hanna said Ghana stood to gain a lot from the EPA which was concluded in June last year between the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region and the EU.

Citing Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, as an example to buttress his point, the EU official said thanks to its preferential access to the EU market, Bangladesh had created four million jobs in manufacturing in the last 10 years.

"These jobs support 20 million people, with steady wages coming in to households, millions of lives have been transformed," he said.

He said Ghana had huge potential to become a major regional and international trading hub, adding that the deepening of regional integration in ECOWAS, through the introduction of the common external tariff, opened up new opportunities.

Ghana has access to markets all over the world, with the EU being the biggest.

All goods from Ghana enter the EU market free of custom duties, tariffs or measures of equivalent effect.

In 2013, 30.5 percent of Ghana's international trade was with the EU. The region was by far the leading destination of Ghana's exports, absorbing 48 percent, almost half of all Ghanaian exports, to the world.

It is also the biggest source of Foreign Direct Investment and the largest provider of development assistance.

The conference was on the theme: "Diversifying Ghana's Economy Through Sustained Export Trade". Endi