Be proactive to benefit from AfCFTA – AfroChampions urges businesses in Ghana

Economic news for Thursday, January 14, 2021

Source: laudbusiness.com

01/14/2021

Almost a week after the start of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), Ghanaian businesses, large and small, were tasked with being proactive in taking steps to participate and fully benefit from the agreement to continent-wide.

Trade under the deal was supposed to have started in July 2020 but had to be postponed until January 2021.

Despite the late start, awareness of the agreement and its inherent benefits among businesses, especially those in the informal sector, is woefully low.

Despite the publicity built around the AfCFTA, data from the Ghana Statistical Service shows that only 134,000 companies are currently aware of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement, or 26.2% of companies in nationwide.

Speaking to Citi Business News on the types of businesses that could benefit from the deal, chief strategist of AfroChampions, a regional public-private partnership promoting impactful regional investments by African multinationals, Michael Kottoh called for a dissemination of more information on the agreement from the government and other stakeholders involved in the agreement in Ghana.

“I mean all kinds of businesses are qualified to trade under the AfCFTA, large and small. Most importantly, Ghanaian companies are trying to get the government to list the products that Ghana has negotiated for trade under the deal. This is the most important thing. Not all products necessarily qualify to be marketed under the agreement. The second thing is to understand the various African countries that are currently trading under the agreement, as not all African countries immediately join at the start of trade.

“The third thing they need to know is to try to understand exactly what the export process looks like. If, for example, I want to export shea butter from Ghana to Kenya, what exactly is the process I need to follow? By process I mean what tariffs apply under the agreement for that particular product and what do I need to do to get the product to Kenya. We need more information to be provided by the government and the main agencies involved in this area. But companies should also be proactive and try to get information about it as much as possible, ”he added.