Development economist, Dr Nii Moi Thompson, has said that the signing of an economic agreement with Europe will not be a panacea for the country to overcome trading problems. "There will always be restrictions to the European market. As soon as they realize that we have now become efficient in production, they will start putting up barriers of various kinds," Dr Thompson told the Daily Graphic. He said the best option for the country was to concentrate on improving its production and promote regional trade where a huge market potential existed. Ghana, last December, signed an interim Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU) to safeguard its exports to the EU market under a quasi-preferential treatment agreement. That was after an earlier agreement, the Cotonou Agreement, had expired on December 31, last year because it was inconsistent with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. That agreement guaranteed a non-reciprocal quota and duty-free market access to the EU market for goods from Ghana and other African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. Dr Thompson said the country should do an introspective assessment of itself on how it could improve its production capacity. "Presently, we can't meet orders and this calls for an integrated approach of fixing our energy and infrastructure," Dr Thompson said, and also drew a parallel between infrastructure and the services it generated. "We need to get the needed services from the infrastructure, else we will not get the benefit thereof," he said. The economist was worried about the spate of lawlessness, the poor maintenance culture and the misuse' of public property and infrastructure. He deplored the culture whereby drivers and hawkers took over the roads in cities, making it difficult for the free flow of traffic, thus defeating the purpose for the project. Dr Thompson buttressed his argument with the illustration that if, say, Ghana and Singapore each spent $20 million to put up a facility the benefits would be different for the two countries depending on their level of intolerance of lawlessness. He also cited poor delivery in the public sector, high labour cost and the expensive and unreliable Internet access as some of the reasons for the uncompetitiveness of businesses in the country.