Ghana in Search of Regional Integration Agenda 76 Notice that while intra-EU and intra-NAFTA trade has been growing steadily and ASEAN has shown consistency, few of the African integrative groupings are showing such tendencies(UEMOA and SADC, but only marginally). Although there are prospects of growth in intra-regional growth in 1990s in ECOWAS and UEMOA, these cannot be compared with such growth in other regions like NAFTA and MERCOSUR. Table 3 African Region ’ s Average Annual Imports (as a percentage of total imports 1996-2001) AM CEM COMES ECCA ECOWA Fran SAD UEMO AFRIC U AC A S S c C A A Zon e AMU 3.07 0.17 0.58 0.17 0.8 0.6 0.27 0.43 4.86 CEMAC 0.91 3.43 0.55 3.65 8.37 6.22 1.94 2.79 14.44 COMES 0.62 0.12 3.49 0.22 0.42 0.26 9.77 0.14 13.27 A ECCAS 0.57 2.31 2.19 2.55 5.92 4.18 7.92 1.87 17.89 ECOWA 0.81 0.27 0.2 0.28 10.19 4.9 1.31 4.63 12.5 S Franc 1.19 1.59 0.36 1.68 14.81 7.98 1.52 6.39 18.89 Zone SADC 0.05 0.13 3.39 0.37 0.9 0.36 0.11 0.23 12.55 UEMOA 1.36 0.57 0.19 0.59 18.55 9.05 1.73 8.47 21.35 AFRICA 0.03 0.01 0.04 0.01 0.06 0.03 0.1 0.03 0.21 Source: Statistics Dept. African Development Bank. Reproduced in African Development Report 2003, p192 WLD 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 From the tables above, it is clear that intra-African trade is very insignificant. Unless intra-regional trade is enhanced, the efforts towards integration would not yield the necessary benefits. This may be done through production diversification, the removal of the bottlenecks that strangulate the free movement of factors, harmonisation of macro-economic policies within the RECs and the acceleration of intra-African infrastructure and communication development. This would help to integrate national markets into sub-regional markets and lead to increasing intra­regional trade within Africa. Even where some intra-bloc trade goes on there is usually the reluctance and inability of the members of economic blocs to create the facilities and mechanisms necessary to expedite the movement of goods and services. A case in point is the clearing mechanism on which agreements may have been signed but not followed up. One consequence of this is that it destroys confidence in the clearinghouses. In some cases, clearinghouses have either collapsed or continue with difficulty. The process towards the establishment of sub-regional monetary unions intended to facilitate the removal of such macro-economic disharmonies and provide a stable environment for economic integration to take place unimpeded has been rather slow. 101 Meanwhile, procedures governing free movement of goods and services are lengthy and cumbersome and often lead to delays and unnecessary bureaucratic work. To this may be added the exorbitant fees transporters are required to pay in order to cross borders. Further road tolls are required to be paid at customer 101 A clear case in point is the West Africa Monetary Zone(WAMZ), which is supposed to introduce a second monetary zone for English-speaking West Africa with the ECO as the currency by 2003. This date has been postponed a number of times, now settled at 2009