ECOWAS RALLIES MEMBER STATES ON REGIONAL INVESTMENT CLIMATE MONITORING FRAMEWORK TO OPTIMIZE INVESTMENT BENEFITS ECOWAS has called on Member States to adopt its newly developed regional investment climate monitoring mechanism and undertake relevant reform initiatives to improve the policy environment so as to optimize the benefits of a common investment market in the region. “In the past several years, the ECOWAS region has witnessed increased inflows of global foreign direct investment facilitated by the market size and natural resource endowments of the region, which make possible broader investment frontiers and relatively higher return on investment,” the ECOWAS Commissioner for Industry and Private Sector Promotion, Mr. Kalilou Traore told a stakeholders’ meeting on the ECOWAS Investment Climate Indicators Report, which opened in Lomé, Togo on Wednesday 2nd July 2014. He however, noted that investment in the region still faced many challenges including unpredictable regulatory and policy environment, lack of quality production infrastructure, lack of access to or high cost of finance as well as difficult land administration structures and title registration processes, which affect the cost of doing business, influence investor perception and therefore the quantum and quality of investment inflow into the region. The result is that West Africa “is receiving less than its optimal share of global investment inflows, than it would have, were all these factors to operate effectively and efficiently; and the environment more conducive,” the Commissioner affirmed. Consequently, he said that private sector operators have advocated for the measurement of 19 key indicators captured in the ECOWAS Investment Climate Monitoring Indicators Report 2012. While the survey might not have thrown up anything strange or unknown in the region, the Commissioner said the documented facts are meant to draw the attention of policy makers to the implications of the issues raised for the business environment, while also providing relevant information on the areas requiring fundamental reforms across the region. The findings, he said also provide relevant information to assist investors in assessing their prospective locations and planning of their operations within the region. According to him, the three-day stakeholders’ sensitization meeting is not only to present the report, but would also serve as a Public-Private Dialogue platform between government operatives and the private sector on how to collaborate to improve the indices, going forward. The Commissioner therefore urged participants to focus on the issues highlighted in the report and come out with regional and national strategies to ensure that the indicators to be reformed are improved upon in the shortest possible time. In his opening remarks, the ECOWAS Director of Private Sector, Mr. Alfred Braimah, set the tone for the deliberations by quoting the latest World Bank Doing Business Report as it relates to West Africa. He also outlined the process used in implementing the project with the ECOWAS private sector actors as key drivers of the process, noting that apart from Cape Verde, most ECOWAS Member States faced serious business challenges, especially in the critical areas of Small and Middle Enterprises (SMEs), which constitute the engine of economic growth. The director said a critical analysis of the Investment Climate Indicators report, prepared with the support of the EU-Business Climate facility, could help explain why in spite of its abundant human and natural resources West Africa is unable to attract sufficient good and quality investments. The need for a regional framework for benchmarking the regional investment climate is consistent with the movement towards the ECOWAS Common Investment Market (ECIM) through the adoption of Common External Tariff (CET) and eventually, a coordinated investment policy space. The meeting is being attended by public and private sector investment operators from within and outside the region, including representatives of the Federation of West African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FEWACCI), regional organizations such as the West African Business Association (WABA), Federation of Business Women and Entrepreneurs in West Africa (FEBWE), Federation of West African Manufacturers Associations (FEWAMA) as well as resource persons and ECOWAS officials.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 13:25:54 +0000
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