By Gospel Amaliamifeobu
Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delts, has assured the Federal Government of a robust partnership towards domesticating the African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCTA) agreement.
Senator Okowa gave the assurance when he met with a federal government trade delegation led by the Minister for Industry Trade and Investment Mr. Niyi Adebayo in Asaba.
He urged the Federal Government to quickly address the issues of high cost of funding and poor power supply in the country.
The Governor pointed out that there were bottlenecks associated with export trading and urged the federal government to work towards eliminating the constraints to encourage more traders.
He commended the Minister for the enthusiasm in moving from state to state in ensuring that more states were involved in the trade agreement to boost export and increase internally generated revenue. Senator Okowa also called on the Federal government to ensure that setbacks involved in exports were taken care of since many exporters were already discouraged in doing the export business.
On his part, the Minister who was represented by the Director of Trade in the Ministry Mr. Aliyu Abubakar said the AFCFTA agreement sought to create a single market for made-in-Africa goods with a population of one-point-two billion people and a combined Gross Domestic Product GDP of three-point four trillion dollars.
