The President, Economic Community of West African States Commission, Omar Touray, on Wednesday, lamented over the low trade volume among member states.
“At the moment, our intra-community trade stands at 12 per cent. On the whole in Africa, our intra-continental trade is under 20 per cent which is extremely low,” Touray said on Wednesday in Abuja.
“If you look at developed countries, countries that are sufficiently integrated or regions that are sufficiently reintegrated, their intra-community trade alone is around 60 to 70 percent. So we have a long way to go,” he said.
Touray advised that the region should produce and export more of its goods to boost the intra-community trade volume.
This is why it is important that we open our market to our own produce, and our own manufactured items.
“To encourage industrialisation, we insist on having sufficient local content in what we produce,” he said.
The 15-nation bloc ECOWAS, formed in 1975 to promote economic integration in member states, has struggled in recent years to reverse a wave of military takeovers in the region, including Mali in 2020 and 2021, Burkina Faso in 2022 and Niger last year.
