Experts from member states of the Economic Community of West African States are meeting in Accra to review, validate and approve draft regulations for the ECOWAS community levy operations manual.
The four-day meeting brought together experts from the Central Banks of Member States and members of the ECOWAS Administration and Finance Committee.
Organised by the Finance and Budget Directorate of the ECOWAS Internal Services Department, the meeting aimed to engage stakeholders in a strategic dialogue for the development of the final version of the ECOWAS Community Levy User Manual.
The Community Levy, which is the main source of funding for ECOWAS activities, accounting for 70% to 80% of the budget, is a 0.5% tax applied to the total value of goods imported from non-ECOWAS countries.?
Dr Roberts MOIKOWA, representative of the Chairman of the ECOWAS Administration and Finance Committee, who opened the meeting, said the manual was crucial for sustaining the levy and improving compliance.
He noted that the tax provided between 70 and 90% of ECOWAS budget financing its activities and regional programmes.
Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the meeting in Accra to validate the draft regulation for the Community Levy Manual of Operations, the ECOWAS Commission’s Director of Budget and Treasury, Molokwu Azikiwe, said the review was crucial to safeguarding the levy’s role as a reliable source of funding for regional integration programmes.
“The community levy forms about 75 to 80 percent of the programmes and activities of ECOWAS as a whole and is our main source of revenue,” he explained.
Azikiwe added that the protocol, after nearly two decades of use, must be updated to reflect new realities in trade and revenue mobilization.
“The idea was that after using this protocol for about 18 years there is a need to amend it, improve it and update it to be able to address current trends in revenue collections,” he noted.
On the question of enforcement, he emphasized that sanctions for non-compliance remain a policy tool available to the bloc, though final decisions rest with higher authorities.
“The protocol has a provision for sanctions, but that is the decision of the Council of Ministers and eventually the Heads of State,” he clarified.
In his remarks, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Internal Services, Prof. Nazil Abdullahi Darma, stressed that “there is no better time than now to develop an effective operations manual.”
He said that operational challenges warranted a review of the manual in order to make it comply with contemporary realities.
The final manual will be presented to the ECOWAS Council of Ministers for approval.
Source: GNA
The post ECOWAS experts meet in Accra to review community levy manual appeared first on Ghana Business News.
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