Members of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) are divided over whether the government should join other West African states to sign onto the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).
While some members of the association, mostly the tuna, fruit processors and exporters and other companies exporting into the European market are fully behind the agreement, their counterparts who manufacture for the local and sub-regional market are up in arms against it.
That is in spite of the fact that the AGI had on April 17, 2014 issued a statement in which it called on the government not to give its assent to the EPA.
The disagreement within the association over the matter seriously arose at a forum organised by the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI) in Accra to solicit the views of industry and civil society organisations (CSOs) on the stance the country should take as far as the EPA, a proposed bilateral trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and the Asian, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, is concerned.
Although the Vice-President of AGI, Dr Yaw Adu Gyamfi, had stated that the association, which is made up of more than 400 members, was against the signing of the agreement in its current state, some members later took turns at the event to lobby government into endorsing it.
