Dr Charles Yaw Brempong-Yeboah, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and NEPAD yesterday expressed concern about the many road barriers jointly mounted by personnel of Ghana Police Service, Customs, Excise and Preventive Service and Ghana Immigration Service at the country's borders.

He noted that some of them had no effect on national security and public order and significantly slowed down intra-regional trade, increase costs and reduce the competitiveness of local products.

'Such barriers could even encourage smuggling and other unorthodox trading activities,' Mr Brempong-Yeboah said at a workshop for border operators drawn from Brong-Ahafo, Ashanti and Northern Regions.

The workshop organised by Economic Community of West African State (ECOWAS) Bureau was attended by personnel of Ghana Immigration Service and CEPS. It was to sensitize the participants on the implementation of ECOWAS Protocols on free movement of persons, goods, services and right of establishment among member states.

Mr Brempong-Yeboah said results of improved road transport governance surveillance undertaken by West African Trade Hub between October to December 2007 revealed that on the Tema-Ouagadougou Highway alone 24 road barriers had been mounted.

In addition, there are 24 check points between Ouagadougou and Bamako and 17 between Lome and Ouagadougou.

Mr Brempong-Yeboah stressed the need for citizens, goods and services in the Sub-Region to move freely across member states without impediment to boost intra-regional trade and generate maximum socio-economic benefits.

He said to accelerate implementation of the protocol on free movement in the Sub-Region, European Union was funding the establishment of joint border posts to facilitate transit procedures at the country's borders.

Mr Brempong-Yeboah said bilateral meetings had been held between Ghana, Cote D'Ivoire, Togo and Burkina Faso which led to the identification of various sites at Elubo in Western, Noepe in Volta and Paga in Upper East Regions.

He explained that as part of efforts to promote ECOWAS Protocols on free movement, regional infrastructure, inter-state road facilitation and good governance, programmes had been developed to construct railway lines between Lagos and Accra linking Cotonou and Lome.

Mr Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, Brong-Ahafo Regional Minister said integration measures such as liberalisation of international trade, adoption of common tariff for member countries of ECOWAS and coordination of investment policies would make the regionalization of import substitution policies more viable.

He regretted that for 30 years now, ECOWAS had spent a substantial part of its existence on resolution of crises in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Niger, La Cote D'Ivoire, Guinea Bissau and Togo but much had not been achieved on the objectives of ECOWAS.

Mr Baffour-Awuah noted that the challenge with intra-ECOWAS trade was that member states mainly produced the same commodities and cited Ivorian plastic goods competing against their Nigerian counterparts in the Nigerian market and vice versa.

He said integration as a penultimate step in trade liberalisation involved industrial complementation and opening up of the domestic markets which although was primarily an economic issue required bold and substantive political decisions. Source: GNA - Ghana News Agency