VICE PRESIDENT CHALLENGES MEMBER STATES TO MEET WAMZ CRITERIA
The vice President of the republic of Ghana John Dramani Mahama has enunciated that lack of political will in member countries which is mostly expressed in the chronic non-observance of commitments undertaken within the respective agreement as well as the insufficient use of instruments set by these agreement among others constitute a huge challenge to efforts made at regional and economic integration
Mr. John Mahama made this known at the convergence council of ministers and governors of the West African monetary zone meeting held on the 17th of December 2009 in Accra.
He stated, it was rather unfortunate that despite series of technical meetings and strategic decisions taken in the recent past to introduce a new currency the “ECO” in order for member states to meet the criteria for entering into the West Africa Monetary Zone (WAMZ) , it has continued to be a struggle to get the individual countries involved to meet the primary criteria and maintain them, quickly adding that, the impact of the recent global economic meltdown would have been less severe on member states if there existed a common monetary Zone.
He said the small and disjointed nature of the West African economies, the weak industrial and Agricultural base as well as the low level of inter-regional trade among West Africa States strongly affirms the need to establish a monetary zone which will facilitate the insulation of the zones economy against external and domestic shocks.
He reiterated that member countries must strive to put their aspirations within the proper context by looking at the structure of their respective economies whilst keeping in mind the vagaries that could cause a a postpone of the take –off time line beyond 2015, acknowledging the fact that there is therefore the pressing need for more efforts to be done if the process of the convergence is to draw any sustained improvement.
The vice president stated that in the case of Ghana even though it was unable to meet any of the primary convergence criteria during the last review, there had been a considerable progress thereafter experiencing a high economic growth in the recent past and still targeting to achieve a budget deficit below 10 percent to GDP ratio in the near nearest future
He continued that, due to effective management of the economy, the country have rein in inflation and is optimistic of hitting a year end target below 16 percent. He also commented on the “Cedi” making modest gains to several of its trading currencies after recovering from a free fall status it had crept into in the recent past.
These economic strides he said, reposes confidence in government to work for creating the appropriate synergies in the economy to ensure that the country gets back for meeting the convergence criteria by target year 2015.
He urged the ministers and governors present to be professional and patriotic in their deliberations and put in their very best in order to reach a substantive consensus since all the stakeholders in the sub-regional enterprise need their technical expertise to provide a sound basis which could internationally be accepted.