Ghana’s trade facilitation needs are being assessed to ensure effective negotiation for differential treatment at ongoing trade facilitation negotiations.Trade sector policy makers and constituents as well as facilitators from the World Trade Organization (WTO) are deliberating in Accra to provide proposals to influence trade facilitation negotiations. 

 Minister of Trade,  Industry, Private Sector Development and President's Special Initiatives, Papa Owusu-Ankomah, said linking trade related institutions in a more productive way to improve the business environment, especially at the ports is a challenge confronting the nation. Papa Owusu-Ankomah said a situation where institutions unilaterally initiated their own regulations and laws also posed a challenge to the business community and called for the publication of those laws and regulations to ensure that there is transparency.

He said there was the need to incorporate comprehensive technical assistance and capacity building provisions with flexible domestic policy necessary to respond to country specific circumstances in the New Trade Facilitation Agreement. 
    

The trade minister urged the participants to develop appropriate technical assistance requirements to enable the country to implement obligations arising out of the trade facilitation agreement.
    

Mr Robert Struthers, a Technical Officer of the World Customs Organisation, said the World Trade Organization's negotiation proposals agreed by its members would be used to assist the participants to assess the country's needs. He expressed the hope that the workshop would come out with proposals that would guide the country's negotiators at the trade facilitation negotiations.