The Managing Director/ CEO of Nigerian Export Import Bank (NEXIM), Mr. Roberts U. Orya has reaffirmed the commitment of Nigeria’s Trade Policy Bank to removing trade barriers and promoting seamless commercial exchanges among ECOWAS Member States.

He disclosed this at the annual conference of the Borderless Alliance tagged ‘Connecting Markets’ taking place in Accra.

In a statement issued by the Bank’s Head of Corporate Communication, Mr. Chinedu Moghalu, the BorderlessAlliance fosters change by bringing to light trade inefficiencies throughout the region.

Speaking through his keynote address, ‘Improving Investment Climate  Through Effective Movement of Goods and Persons in West Africa’, Mr. 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 espouses 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 stated that notwithstanding the good intendment 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 Liberalization Scheme (ETLS) and ECOWAS Road Transit Scheme (ISRT) and as a matter of urgency invigorate implementation of the macroeconomic policy convergence and policy harmonization.

Identifying the major problem as one of transport infrastructure,Mr Orya informed the meeting that NEXIM Bank,is committed to facilitating the removal of trade barriers to commercial exchanges among Member States even beyond the sub-region.

He stated that high transportation costs and excessive transit time has regrettably made intra-regional trade non-competitive with West African transport and logistics costs beingone of the highest in the World.

This becomes very palpable when it is realized that there is no dedicated safe and modern fleet to encourage and facilitate Atlantic Short-Sea Trade and other challenges that constitute barriers to increasing intra-regional trade and free movement of persons, goods and services. Hence, NEXIM Bank determination to facilitate a private sector-driven Sealink initiative targeted at stringing up the coastal members of ECOWAS as well as some Central African countries.

Concluding his remarks,Mr. Orya stated that effective free movement of persons, goods and servicesis paramount to improving the investment climate and called on ECOWAS membersto intensify activities on Corridor Management and Border Information Centres to reduce incidences of Non-Tariff Measures.