Ghana in Search of Regional Integration Agenda 128 The private sector is defined to include all non-state actors; companies operating in the formal and informal sectors; business associations and civil society advocacy groups. In this paper, however, emphasis is laid on companies in the formal sector as well as the major national business associations who are on record to have made positive and constructive interventions in the integration process and are known to persist in this direction. This is not to downplay the role of the informal operators in regional trade. Not only has cross-border trade preceded the advent of ECOWAS, but the fact remains that if data on informal trade across the borders could be captured, then trade statistics for the region would have pointed to a greater level of integration, particularly with regard to trade in goods. In Ghana, under the auspices of the then ministries of Trade and Industry and Regional Cooperation, the private sector's participation in the integration process was given a boost. The Association of Ghana Industries(AGI) and the Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industries(GNCCI) have been invited to join various government delegations to ECOWAS technical meetings(including Ministerial Meetings that preceded Heads of States and Governments conferences) and workshops at which programmes for integration are discussed. AGI, along with other private sector Associations from Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Senegal among others. have been actively engaged in the development of the West Africa Common Industrial Policy(WACIP); the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and negotiations between ECOWAS and the European Union among several others. By and large, the private sectors, specifically the business associations, in Ghana and Nigeria have been in favour of the Ghana-Nigeria fast track approach to the extent that this had the potential of accelerating the ECOWAS integration process. In their view, the two countries have a lot in common that could facilitate economic integration – common colonial heritage, and resultant characteristic of the economies, culture and language. In addition, being two of the four dominant economies in the sub-region, their integration would serve to exert the needed pressures to get the other ECOWAS economies to move towards the implementation of the ECOWAS agenda. To this end, AGI in 1999 hosted a West Africa Industrial Business Associations Seminar in Accra. The objectives of the Seminar included; Creating a forum for industrialists to; discuss the state of implementation of the ECOWAS agenda; Promote the exchange of ideas and harmonisation of strategies of the industrial associations in moving the integration agenda forward; Establish a network of industrialists in West Africa. Participants were drawn from Ghana, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal.(Report on FEWAMA seminar, 11 April, 2000)