Economic integration requires innovation : Amissah-Arthur
The Vice President, Mr Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, has urged the convergence council of the West Africa Monetary Zone (WAMZ) to do away with what he calls the ‘dogmatic thinking’ and be innovative in their approach to enable the West African sub-region to achieve full economic integration.
He said it was urgent for the council to apply the same commitment to the success of peace and security integration to the task of economic integration.
“We have postponed the establishment of the second monetary zone five times. Given the lack of clear progress on the substantive convergence agenda, do we still need a WAMZ that is costing our taxpayers a lot of money with no end in sight? he asked at the 35th meeting of the WAMZ Convergence Council in Accra.
He suggested that they could pursue institutional innovations based on the experience of other regions such as the Eurozone.
“We need to design a stability mechanism, create a banking union, strengthen the fiscal regimes in member countries and improve information sharing and surveillance within the zone,” he said.
Global economy
Mr Amissah-Arthur said although the macroeconomic challenges of the global economy and the Ebola virus epidemic had impacted on economies in the sub-region, these difficulties “should rather spur us on as a region to move towards economic and monetary integration, which would make our economies more resilient, especially to the exogenous shocks we experienced.”
WAMZ
Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, Liberia, The Gambia and Sierra Leone make up the WAMZ. They are working towards the establishment of a common West African Central Bank and the launching of a single currency for the WAMZ.
It is envisaged that this zone will be merged with the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) to form a single monetary zone in West Africa.
ECOWAS Commission
The Vice President of the ECOWAS Commission, Dr Toga Gayewea McIntosh, said the West African regime remained a good reference point for economic growth despite its numerous challenges.
“These challenges undoubtedly impacted adversely on economic activities in the WAMZ resulting in a deceleration of real Gross Domestic Growth (GDP) growth as well as fiscal and balance of payment challenges for the zone. However, the financial systems in the zone remained resilient, sound and stable during the period,” he said.
He also explained that in order to improve on the performance of our member states on the convergence scale in the medium term, it was essential to ensure that “our member states continue to implement prudent fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policies and adopt policy measures aimed at enhancing revenue mobilisation and diversification of our economies.”
Dr McIntosh also said the effective implementation of the regional monetary integration programme remained high on the agenda of the authority.
“The ECOWAS leadership has in, recent years, demonstrated renewed interest and enhanced political will to accelerate the pace of implementation of all regional monetary integration programmes,” he said.
He also used the occasion to urge all members of the commission to support the ECOWAS monetary integration agenda to ensure the timely realisation of a credible monetary union which will benefit the people of West Africa. — GB