Ghana, EU assess impact of partnership plan on timber

Sat. January 30, 2010

GHANA and the European Union (EU) yesterday held their first joint monitoring and review meeting in Accra to assess the impact of the Ghana-EU Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) on Ghana’s timber industry.
The agenda for the meeting included: Rules of the procedure; Ghana and EU synopsis of progress since initialling; Plan of action for 2010; Aide memoir and also when to have the next joint monitoring and review meeting.
Ghana, being a major exporter of timber, entered into a voluntary partnership agreement (VPA) negotiations with the European Union (EU) on timber trade in December, 2006.
The VPA is a set of standards and guidelines intended for proper forest governance and timber harvest in Ghana with the view to ensuring that only legal timber is exported from Ghana into the EU.
The VPA is a EU initiative as part of its Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade Action Plan (FLEGTAP) launched in 2003.
Parties in the negotiations engaged in wide consultations with all stakeholders both locally and abroad on the five main VPA elements; definition of legal timber, legality assurance scheme (LAS), restructuring of the local timber industry, the domestic timber market and the impact assessment of the VPA.
Opening the meeting, Ghana’s Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Alhaji Collins Dauda, said the country had the political support to ensure that guidelines as provided by the EU were followed.
Alhaji Dauda noted that by embarking on a number of reforms which had been introduced under the VPA, Ghana would sustain the domestic timber industry.
He pointed out that to ensure the sustenance and increase of the country’s resource base, the country was embarking on vigorous plantation programme, as well as to ensure the supply of legal timber products to the EU market.
For his part, the head of the EU delegation to the meeting, Mr Luis Reira Figueras, said the EU was aware of Ghana’s commitment in terms of the objectives of the agreement and took the opportunity to commend Alhaji Dauda for his personal devotion to ensure that the desired objective was achieved.
He observed that Ghana, by entering into the agreement, had made it a point to reform its forest sector, adding that the EU was prepared to support the country in that direction.
Mr Figueras also commended the Ghana government for the involvement of the private sector, adding that it would help the programme to succeed.
In an interview, the Co-ordinator of the VPA in Ghana, Mr Chris Beeko, said one of the objectives of the agreement was to enable Ghana to continue to export its timber to the EU.
He also stated that as part of the agreement, the EU supported Ghana in the area of financial and technical assistance to ensure that the guidelines were followed to get certified timber to the EU market.