EPA Will Kill Ghana's Industries

Ghana risks losing her industrial production capacity, employment and entire development efforts should she sign the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), the Ghana Trades Union Congress (TUC) has warned. �It�s an attack on our productive capacities, our development efforts and therefore our employment generation capacities,� TUC said. At a press briefing held in Accra last Thursday at the instance of the Ghana Trade and Livelihood Coalition, a civil society group, the head of Industrial Relations and Social Protection at the TUC, Mr Seth Abloso, said the terms of the EPA would have disastrous consequences for Ghana�s domestic industry especially in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors, and therefore destroy the jobs and livelihoods of millions of people. According to the coalition, it had gathered intelligence from various sources that the Minister of Trade and Industry, Madam Hanna Tetteh, was pushing the Ghana government to sign the EPA. �At a recent meeting of Ghana-European Union Partnership, the Minister stated categorically that the benefits of signing the EPAs far outweigh the negatives. She has also recently in an interview granted a local newspaper declared that Ghana will have no alternative than to proceed with the signing of the EPA in the light of the lack of progress at the ECOWAS level,� the coalition said. According to Mr Abloso, it would be disastrous if the Minister succeeded in her efforts, adding that the agreement would destroy the domestic and regional markets of most of Ghana�s job-creating and dynamic manufacturing industries such as furniture, plastics and pharmaceuticals, as well as wire-weaving industries whose main markets are not in Europe but Ghana and the ECOWAS region.