The EU Ambassador to Ghana, Irchad Razaaly has disclosed that his outfit is in constant touch with Ghanaian authorities regarding export to the European markets.
According to him the EU-Ghana Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) has been in place since last year and reckons “so far so good”, urging Ghanaian businesses to take advantage of marketing and selling to close to 450 consumers in Europe.
The EPA is a development-oriented free trade agreement. Under it, the EU provides duty-free, quota- free access for Ghana’s exports to the EU from the first day of application. For its part side, Ghana will progressively reduce its tariffs to zero for 78% of its imports from the EU by 2029.
Speaking in an interview during GIPC’s Young Entrepreneurs Forum (YEF) in Accra last week, he said, “We are conducting regular discussions with Ghanaian authorities when it comes to the lines related to the most transformed goods.
Our goal as the EU is to help the Ghanaian economy to industrialise more in order to sell transformed, better industralised products in the EU market. This is the purpose of the agreement.”
The transformed products he explained includes; cocoa being transformed to chocolate to increase its value, shea butter, fruits, agriculture , industralised products like fertilizer, “all range of products but to access the EU market, it has to be more transformed to bring in more revenue to the Ghanaian economy.”
Mr. Razaaly also indicated that the EU has been addressing the country’s eco-system through skills provision,access to funding,access to markets, adding that they invested 170m euros into the Development Bank Ghana in order for the bank to make available funding via commercial bank, which is expected to benefit young entrepreneurs as well.
The tariff cutting process started in 2020, creating significant new export opportunities for EU exporters. In the future, the EU and Ghana might decide to expand the EPA to include, for example, provisions on investment and trade in services.
Available data indicate that under the EPA, Ghana is gradually removing its import duties for 78% of EU exports by 2029. The timetable for tariff liberalisation comprises; in 2021, duties were removed for products where tariffs are at 5% and 10% (1056 tariff lines), in 2024, almost half of the total lines to be liberalised will be at 0%, in 2029, those products currently at 20% and 35% will be fully liberalised (unless excluded from liberalisation).