The EPAs :

Economic Partnership Agreements – a misnomer !

I cannot help but sharing with you the thoughts that occurred to me when reading these words. I came to think of the EPAs:

Economic Partnership Agreements, what a misnomer!

I am referring to the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), an extension of the Cotonou Agreements, that Europe wishes to conclude with 4 African regions (besides the Caribbean and the Pacific).

They have been given such an unsuitable name that the question arises:

An EPA – is that an Economic Partnership Agreement or an Economic Pauperisation Agreement?

The answer may be found by asking a further question:
Who will benefit from the EPAs?

• Definitely Europe, which is enforcing a tight schedule (despite the fact that it would have been easy to negotiate a derogation at the WTO and obtain more time for the difficult talks ahead). But the EU is visibly in a hurry, whilst the African countries are negotiating without enthusiasm. Shree Baboo Chekitan Servansing, the Permanent Representative of Mauritius at the UN in Geneva and co-ordinator of the ACP group, says the following:
  
  “The logic of market access as a driving force of development has run into a deadlock. Liberalisation is not the key. The proof is this: We have opened up our markets, but our situation has worsened.”
  
  
• More serious still – the Economic Partnership Agreements are in actual fact free trade agreements. That was also their initial name. And that is what they should continue to be called. Not all concerned stand to gain from them. Some will benefit, but so far we have never seen any advantage for the small subsistence farmers. For West Africa the result will be that a few well-situated individuals will prosper through these agreements, to the detriment of the vast majority of the general population. In Burkina Faso, for example, farmers and livestock herders make up 80% of the population. It is foreseeable that they will now sink deeper (even much deeper) into misery.

The EPAs are therefore incompatible with the Millennium Development Goals, in particular with the target of achieving a 50% reduction of extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.

With regard to poverty the objective means more precisely halving the number of inhabitants whose income is less than a dollar a day.

This calls for an explanation. The reference is not to an actual dollar, but to a dollar equivalent “in purchasing power”, which means that income is compared on the basis of the cost of a standard “basket” of products.
A citizen of the United States can by the standard basket for one dollar. In Burkina the price to pay would be 103 CFA francs, which amounts to 3 090 CFA francs per month and per person.

Let us take the example of a woman of the fula tribe in the Hamdalaye area on the outskirts of the capital Ouagadougou. She is a widow and has to feed her seven children. Her only asset: 3 zebu cows that give 5 litres of milk per day. She sells the milk for 300 CFA francs (less than half a Euro) a litre. Her cash income amounts to 750 francs per day. She and her children live in extreme poverty.

The latest World Bank statistics show that approximately 50% of the population of Burkina also live in extreme poverty. Most of them are farmers. There is every indication that the Economic Partnership Agreements will further increase rural poverty levels.

Source: http://milleniumindicators.un.org/unsd/mifre/mi_series_results.asp?

July 4, 2006
Maurice Oudet
Director, SEDELAN