By Felix Khanoba
Nigeria on Monday moves a step closer to meet all the tenets of African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement as stakeholders from the nation’s public and private sectors threw their weight behind the nation’s schedule of commitments on trade in services in five priority key sectors.
The commitments, which were agreed upon after about two-week consultations with experts and critical stakeholders, represent the yearnings of Nigerians in the key sectors for liberalisation under the continental trade pact.
The Nigerian Office for Trade Negotiation (NOTN), which superintended the deliberations, listed the affected priority service sectors as professional business services, financial services, transport services, tourism services and communication services.
Speaking in Abuja on Monday during a joint private and public sector consultative forum to analyse and adopt the specific commitments, the acting Director General of NOTN/Chief Trade Negotiator, Mr Victor Liman, said the agreed position would be forwarded to ECOWAS for harmonisation into a single schedule before its transmission to AfCFTA’s secretariat.
Liman, who said quality outcomes were harvested from the stakeholders’ engagements, posited that the collective commitments reached would ensure that Nigerians are protected from unfair trade practices as well as reposition the economy for better performance.
“This is very important for the country because of the fact that whatsoever we do at AfCFTA will affect our economy. It will affect GDP growth; it will affect job creation and affect productivity, infrastructures and competitiveness for the country.
“I think people need to understand it, engage with it and interrogate it and make sure they contribute their observations, thinking, position to what we do regarding trade negotiation,” he said.
Liman, who commended President Muhammadu Buhari for ensuring the coming into force of NOTN, appealed to the National Assembly to pass the agency’s Bill into an Act.
In a remark, representative of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Vice President, IndustriALL Global Union, Comrade Issa Aremu, commended NOTN for reaching out to relevant Nigerians in the drafting of trade in service commitments.
“Africa should not live on aid but we should trade with ourselves. This (consultation) is a very serious engagement, and not something we should take likely,” he said.
On her part, Senator Khairat Gwadebe of the Senator’s Forum, said the move by NOTN to engage operators of the affected sectors was a welcome development, adding that leveraging on trade will bring about positive economic development in the country.
A communiqué issued at the event hailed the inclusive consultative approach adopted by NOTN, noting, in particular, that the operation of the services policies rests on the private sector and the services under negotiation excludes services provided by governments.
The stakeholders, however, stressed that “it is important for the government to develop and implement policies particularly on infrastructure so that Nigeria can optimize the benefits of the regional and continental free trade agreements.”
Representatives of various professional groups and government agencies including; Nigerian Port Authority, NEXIM Bank, Nigeria Labour Congress, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Maritime Union of Nigeria, Association of Small Scale Industrialists, among several others, attended the consultative forum.
The AUTHORITY reports that AfCFTA came into force in May 2019, and member states have fixed July 2020 for the full operationalisation of the pact.
