Nigeria notifies African Union of intention to sign the Continental Free Trade Agreement

Nigeria has confirmed its intention to sign on to the Continental Free Trade Agreement which will begin operation from July 7. This will mean the continent's biggest market will be accessible to all countries for trading. After a series of engagements between stakeholders and the manufacturing community through a Presidential Committee, the biggest economy on the continent, Nigeria has accepted to join the single trading block. According to the Committee on Impact Assessment and Readiness of CFTA, which submitted its report to President Buhari last week, Nigeria will be signing the agreement at Niger in the upcoming extraordinary summit. Responding to the announcement by Nigeria on his Twitter post, Commissioner of Trade and Industry for the African Union, ambassador Albert Muchanga stated" Nigeria to sign the AfCTA during Extraordinary Summit in few days. Good and important development. Two more to go and all Africa market will start shaping up" This will mean that Ghanaians can enter the Nigerian market with their goods and services duty-free and quota free. It will also throw a challenge to the Ghanaian Businesses to be more competitive in order to maximize their gains from the Nigerian market. The aim of the agreement is to make intra African trading which has been around 15 per cent more flexible for member countries. This is expected to boost internal trading by more than 50 per cent. With Nigeria coming on board, Benin and Eritrea are the only two countries left to be part of the agreement. This is certainly good news for the continent because Nigeria is currently the biggest Economy on the continent.

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