The impact of the ECOWAS Treaty on the dynamics of food commerce among ECOWAS member states was investigated in this study. The study's specific goals were to assess the effects of the ECOWAS Treaty on food trade among Member States, estimate the actual and potential level of food trade in the ECOWAS region, determine each ECOWAS country's comparative advantage in food trade within the region, and evaluate the level of food trade diversification in the ECOWAS region before and after the treaty. Secondary data was employed in the study, which covered a 49-year period from 1970 to 2018. The study's analytical tools included the Overall Openness Index, Intensity of Trade Index, Indicative Trade Potential Index, Revealed Comparative Advantage Index, Herfindahl index, and the paired sample t-test. The study found that the region's countries are moderately open to food commerce, with smaller economies (in terms of economic mass) being more open than larger economies. After the region became a free trade area, all member nations' regional trade intensities (both on the export and import sides of food commerce) increased (FTA). However, the region's countries have yet to fully realise their potential in food commerce within the region, with food exports accounting for only 5.0 percent of ECOWAS regional trade between 1970 and 2018. It was found that there is still a substantial disparity (p = 0.046) between the actual and prospective level of food trade, despite the fact that food trade diversification has expanded greatly (p = 0.009) since the treaty within the region. As a result, the ECOWAS Treaty has had a favourable impact on regional food commerce. Policy measures that encourage intra-regional food commerce should be facilitated in all ECOWAS member states, it was urged.
Author(S) Details
Olalekan Ibitoye
School of Business and Management, Management Development Institute of Singapore in Tashkent (MDIST), Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
View Book:- https://stm.bookpi.org/NIEBM-V4/article/view/5329
No comments:
Post a Comment