The Chairman of Parliamentary Select Committee on Trade, Industry and Tourism, Nana Akomea has observed that divergent views between major players to the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) necessitates a regular intellectual discourse to enable parliament to reach an informed and unbiased consensus when ratifying the agreement. The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) are due to be signed on December 31, 2007 between the European Union (EU) and African, Carribean and Pacific (ACP) countries. While the EU and government negotiators favour plotting the course, civil society organisations who have been given space to participate, believe that the exercise should be abandoned or reviewed in its current form. This position was highlighted at a capacity building workshop organised by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) in collaboration with the Parliamentary Select Committee on Trade, Industry and Tourism, the Institute for Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), the Ministry of Trade, Private Sector Development and President's Special Initiative with civil society organisations participating in Accra last week. Delivering the keynote address, the Minister of Trade, Industry, PSD and PSI, Alan Kyeremanten noted that for over 30 years, trade relations between the EU and ACP states were governed by a nonreciprocal preferential trade regime in the four successive Lome Conventions and the current Cotonou Partnership Agreement (CPA) under which over 90% of exports entering the EU were duty free. However, the trade regime of the Lome IV Convention which was incorporated in the CPA with slight modifications, apply up to December 31, 2007 when it will be replaced by the new reciprocal preferential arrangements called EPAs. He indicated that a "green paper" published by the European Commission in 1997 ahead of the 1998 talks on a new agreement indicated that ACP countries' share of the EU market had declined from 6.7% in 1996 to 3% in 1998 with 60% of total exports concentrated only in 10 products with a handful of countries registering economic growth while per capita GDP in sub-Saharan Africa grew by an average of only 0.4% per annum in 1960-1992 compared to 2.3% for developing countries as a whole. Thus the objectives of the trade regime of the Lome Convention were not being achieved. Coupled with this, he said non-ACP developing contracting parties to GATT were unwilling to support the granting of waivers since the Lome trade regime discriminated against them. Eventually, the EU settled on the EPAs to which ACP countries reluctantly agreed. From the foregoing, the EPA will enter into force in 2008 between ACP states and the EU that provides for the reciprocal elimination of trade barriers in respect of "substantially all trade" by the end of a transitional period of 10 years, or more in exceptional cases, where justified. Civil society organisations, maintain that the reciprocal removal of barriers (tariffs and non-tariffs) would disadvantage West African economies by leading to an influx of cheap and highly subsidized EU imports, lead to a drastic loss in customs revenue and argue that ACP countries are not obliged to negotiate the liberalisation of the services sector within the EPA negotiations among other concerns. Given the stance the organisations hold with the outstanding issues, the possibility that the EPAs may not be signed on schedule, prompted a platform to be created to trash out the issues to enable members of the committee appreciate the state of the current negotiations. Culled from B&FT