PRESS STATEMENT ON EPA 24th May 2012Ladies and gentlemen of the press, we represent a cross-wide section of citizens groups and constituencies of Ghana. We have gathered here this morning to alert you to what we see as a grave new development in the long-running negotiations of the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union.Recent utterances by the Minister of Trade and Industry confirm intelligence we have gathered from various sources that the Minister is pushing the Ghana government to sign the Interim Economic Partnership Agreement, IEPA that was initialled in 2007.At a recent public meeting of Ghana-EU Partnership the Minister stated categorically that the benefits of signing the EPAs far outweigh the negatives. This comes on the heels of an interview granted a local newspaper not too long ago where she declared that Ghana will have no alternative than proceed with signature of the IEPA in the light of the lack of progress at the ECOWAS level.The Minister’s claims are not only incorrect. They also contradict her own publicly stated positions. For instance, just last month at the Doha conference of the UNCTAD, she argued publicly that the EPAs will only benefit European companies in Africa. On many occasions since she took over the job of Minister in 2009, she had argued that serious changes will have to be made to the IEPA as initialled before Ghana can consider signing. As far as we are aware, none of these contentious issues in the IEPA has been resolved. Certainly, nothing has happened in terms of changes to the IEPA since her statement in Doha to make her adopt such a dramatic u-turn.The Minister has also suggested that signing the IEPAs is the only option to protect Ghanaian exporters. This is not correct. So far only a tiny handful of exporters stand to be affected if the IEPA is not signed. But even here, there is a mechanism to meet the need of this few. The ECOWAS trade ministers meeting last year in Accra, adopted a regional mechanism (Solidarity Fund), put forward by her own Ministry based on experts advice, to compensate the few exporters in Ghana and Ivory Coast who could be affected if there is no timely progress on the EPAs. The Minister seems to have done very little since the decision was taken to ensure the operationalisation of the FundThe Ministers’ inconsistencies and omissions only serve to confirm information we have to the effect that she has been pushing a reluctant cabinet to sign the IEPAs.It will be disastrous if the Minister succeeds in this effort. As they stand now, the terms of the Interim EPA will have devastating consequences for domestic industry, especially in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors, and therefore destroy the jobs and livelihoods of millions of people. The IEPAs will destroy the domestic and regional markets for the most of job-creating and dynamic manufacturing industries like furniture, plastics, pharmaceutical, wire-weaving, etc, whose main market is not Europe, but Ghana and the ECOWAS region.Ironically, this cost will be paid as an attempt to meet the needs of a few exporters, which is not even necessary since there are alternative means.This is so plainly unacceptable and we call on the public to reject the Minister’s attemptsBy Economic Justice Network (EJN) of Ghana