Proposed EPA will deepen unemployment

04-19-08
Page 23

THE Food Rights Advisor to ActionAid International, Ms Anna Antwi, has said the proposed Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) being negotiated between the European Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will deepen unemployment in the country.
Apart from that, the agreement would also worsen poverty and hunger, especially among rural producers.
“Jobs and employment in Ghana are threatened by the EU’s proposed free trade agreement with the country. The agreement will enforce the lowering of import tariffs on products like tomato paste, chicken parts, meat, dairy and other products which will flood the local markets. The consequence is great hardships in poor, rural communities where people’s livelihoods are destroyed, making local producers poorer,” she emphasised.
Ms Antwi said this at a panel discussion organised as part of the civil society forum on the upcoming 12th United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to be held in Accra from April 20 to 25, 2008.
The programme, which was on the theme, “International Trade and Employment: The Case of Agriculture in Ghana”, was organised by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and it formed part of the FES work with the TUC to engage trade unions, experts and policy makers on the link between international trade and development.
Ms Antwi noted that the agreement would also prevent Ghana from developing new industries in the future.
She said the implication was that the country would not be able to reduce poverty but remain dependent on primary commodities, with fewer employment opportunities, saying that “Ghana will also depend on the developed nations for its food needs and in the process support the economies and generate employment for other nations”.
She said women would be victims of poverty, with less job opportunities and less social amenities or support for them.
The acting Secretary-General of the TUC, Mr Kofi Asamoah, who spoke on the poultry industry, said there had been unprecedented increase in the importation of chicken, rice, tomatoes and other commodities, mainly from Europe and America, as a result of the unbridled trade liberalisation.
He said although 95 per cent of the country’s poultry requirements were produced domestically in 1992, the figure dropped to 10 per cent in 2002 when the country imported about 26,000 tonnes of chicken, mostly from the EU.
“Many small and medium-scale poultry farmers have closed their enterprises and those surviving are unable to operate at their full capacities. Earlier studies have estimated that over 400,000 jobs have been affected in the poultry industry alone as a result of the importation of cheap poultry products,” he said.
The Resident Director of the FES, Ms Kathrin Meissner, said the upcoming UNCTAD meeting would play an important role in determining the future relevance of the organisation in the multilateral trade regime.
The General Secretary of the General Agriculture Workers Union (GAWU), Mr Kingsley Offei-Nkansah, stressed the need for the government to develop pro-poor policies to get the country out of poverty.