Robert Orya, the Managing Director/CEO of the Nigerian Export Import Bank (NEXIM), at the annual conference of the Borderless Alliance tagged ‘Connecting Markets’ taking place in Accra, Ghana from February 21 – 22, 2013, reaffirmed the commitment of Nigeria’s Trade Policy Bank to removing trade barriers and promoting seamless commercial exchanges among ECOWAS Member States
The Bank’s Head of Corporate Communication, Chinedu Moghalu, said the Borderless Alliance fosters change by bringing to light, trade inefficiencies throughout the region.
According to him, through the work of its partners, it undertakes research to find out what are the most paralyzing obstacles to producers, traders, buyers and investors with the findings and data published as a way to pressure decision makers to change policy to help develop their economies.
In his keynote address, ‘Improving Investment Climate through effective Movement of Goods and Persons in West Africa’, Orya praised the partners of the alliance and lauded the initiative of the ECOWAS Commission targeted at creating an enabling environment to attract investment within the region.
Such frameworks which espouse Common Investment market initiatives such as the ECOWAS Investment Policy Framework (IPF) are designed to nurture and facilitate the creation of a healthy business environment that would be attractive to all investors as, well as foster the pursuance of effective key investment policy, Investment promotion and facilitation; Trade Policy; Tax policy and corporate governance.
He said that notwithstanding the good intentions of the IPF and other frameworks targeted at free trade within the sub-region, facilitating free movement of goods, persons and capital as well as macroeconomic policy convergence, have not worked as satisfactorily.
To achieve the desired progress, the ECOWAS community needs to enhance their commitments to improving the operations and processes of the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme (ETLS) and ECOWAS Road Transit Scheme (ISRT) and as a matter of urgency invigorate implementation of the macroeconomic policy convergence and policy harmonisation, according to him.
Identifying the major problem as one of transport infrastructure, Orya informed the meeting that NEXIM Bank is committed to facilitating the removal of trade barriers to commercial exchanges among member states and even beyond the sub-region.
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