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Nigeria: Closure of Shops - Country, Ghana Hold Dialogue
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This Day (Lagos)
7 May 2008
Posted to the web 7 May 2008
Lagos
To facilitate free trade between Nigeria and Ghana, officials of both countries are meeting in Accra to find solutions to lingering trade disputes between the two nations.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Nigerian team comprises officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
The office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) are also represented at the meeting.
They are expected to thrash out trade issues with their Ghanaian counterparts, including officials of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC).
An official of the NIPC told NAN that the meeting would discuss the closure of some business premises owned by Nigerians by GIPC.
He said a ministerial committee was constituted by the Federal Government to visit Ghana and obtain information on reasons for the closure of the business premises.'
'Following the recent closure of shops ownedby Nigerians doing business in Ghana by the GIPC, this committee was constituted to get the facts and report back to government," he said. NAN reports that Nigeria and Ghana have long-standing trade relations that have led to substantial investment by Nigerians in Ghana.
Areas of investment include banking, manufacturing and distributive trade. Recently, the Ghanaian government introduced a legislation requiring foreign investors to comply with some conditions before they could do business in the country.
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These include investment commitment of at least $50,000 in addition to obtaining licences, residence and work permits. President John Kufuor of Ghana alluded to this legislation in a recent interview with NAN in Accra.0
"That law provides that foreigners' trading must come in with a level of investment to be able to trade. If they fall below that level, then the law says 'No' to them. "Yes, I acknowledge that we are into the era of ECOWAS and, ideally West Africans should be able to go anywhere, settle and trade without any requirements.
"Unfortunately, ECOWAS has not yet come up enough to the degree that will permit this."For instance, people talk of reciprocity. Ghanaian exporters complain that when they bring their goods to Lagos, the Customs people do not allow them."So naturally, when they see their brothers from Nigeria here also importing and operating here freely, they complain: 'but when we go, they don't allow us, so why should we allow them here?'"This is what I'm talking about with the government of Nigeria, so as to ease the bottlenecks for our people to be able to enjoy free trade among themselves," he said.
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