The eco, currency of ECOWAS, postponed to 2025?
Headquarters of ECOWAS in Lomé, Togo.
AFP PHOTO PIUS UTOMI EKPPEI
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The common currency of the ECOWAS countries may not see the light of day before 2025, at best.
This is what emerges from the debates held this Sunday by the leaders of the ECOWAS meeting in ordinary summit.
The heads of state have decided to postpone the resumption of the application of their convergence pact to January 2022, because of the Covid-19 pandemic which has forced West African countries to increase their spending.
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Already
suspended for 2020
, the convergence measures have also been frozen by the Heads of State for the whole of 2021. A new convergence pact must be discussed by the ECOWAS countries.
It will enter into force on January 1, 2022. The West African organization explains this by the fact that the pandemic leads to additional expenditure, which distances governments from the application of criteria, particularly on debt and budget deficit.
Since convergence will only resume in 2022, the common currency is postponed.
Indeed, the Burkinabè Minister of the Economy explains in the press that it takes three years of convergence to consider the launch of the eco, which pushes its date of entry into force to 2025.
Many West African economists are therefore asking a question: isn't this postponement of the eco above all an admission of failure?
In the columns of the daily
Sidwaya,
the Burkinabé economist Ousséni Illy underlines the existing divisions between the UEMOA countries and the others, in particular
Nigeria
.
A divide that blocks the process of monetary integration.
Indeed, whether it is on the statutes of the future Central Bank or the exchange rate regime of the common currency, the leaders have not moved forward.
The risk being to let the doubt on the political will settle in the opinion.
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