The Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Herbert Krapah, reiterates the need for an effective competition policy to safeguard the gains of the AfCFTA and to directly influence industrial transformation.
Speaking at the UPSA Law School’s Africa Trade Roundtable, he said: “State parties must use this opportunity to build the relevant trading infrastructure and adopt the right principles to meet the demands of an extended market.
The protocol on competition policy will be one of the key outcomes of the Phase 2 negotiations; an effective competition policy will be critical to ensuring that the gains expected from the continental market and trade liberalization will not be eroded by uncompetitive pricing.”
According to the deputy minister, as businesses seek to maximize their profit, various practices, some of which are anti-competitive tend to come up which requires an effective competition policy to put to check.
He says again that for the domestic market to harness the benefits of AfCFTA and to ensure that trade liberalization is not compromised by uncompetitive cross-border trade behaviour, a workable competition protocol will be highly significant.
“The gains of this single market will not come overnight or by chance; state parties will have to progressively eliminate both tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade in goods, liberalize trade in services and protect intellectual property,” he adds.
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