The Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, is to introduce a single currency in the sub-region by 2020, THISDAY newspaper of Nigeria reported, quoting the Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, Senator Ike Ekweremadu. Senator Ekweremadu made the announcement in the Eastern Nigerian city of Enugu over the weekend after a one-week meeting for members of the Administration, Finance and Budget Committee of the Parliament.
Ekweremadu, who is also the Deputy President of the Nigerian Senate, disclosed that the move will take effect earlier among English-speaking West African States by 2015 before being extended to the sub-region in 2020, THISDAY said. Mr. Ekweremadu promised to use his tenure to ensure that the Parliament performs its legislative functions well by ensuring that future lists of would-be commissioners, laws and draft budgets are adequately examined before passage to transform the sub-region.
According to the Pan-African News Agency, PANA, under the roadmap for the ECOWAS Single Currency Programme recently approved and adopted by the Council of Ministers and Governors of the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ), the ECOWAS Monetary Union is to be launched in 2020 with the establishment of the ECOWAS Central Bank and the introduction of the common currency. WAMZ member countries - Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria and Sierra Leone - initiated the plan to have a single currency in 2000 following the Accra Declaration and the Bamako Accord in 2000, PANA said.
However, in what has been described as their quest to lay a solid foundation for a sustainable monetary union, the member countries have twice postponed the take-off date for the single currency in WAMZ that has a population of 190 million. The launching of WAMZ will complement that of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), which groups eight West African states that share a common currency, the CFA Franc. UEMOA has as members, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo and Guinea-Bissau. Two ECOWAS member countries - Liberia and Cape Verde - are currently not members of either monetary union though they have been urged to join any of them.
