 Honored guests, ladies and gentlemen, I am honored by the very kind invitation to speak at your 61st annual conference and I must say that the presidential members of council deserve our commendation for convening this virtual conference of our leading economists across the country against all odds. Clearly COVID-19 has lost the battle to technological ingenuity and the human will. The theme of this annual conference, the African Continental Free Trade Area in the post COVID-19 era, what next for Nigeria, is particularly apt. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying global economic shutdown could not have come at a worse time or the African Continental Free Trade Area because trading was to have started on the 1st of July 2020. This has meant a delay in reaping some of the expected benefits of the of the free trade equipment. The theme is also relevant because the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted negatively on almost all African countries and will have lasting effects on several economic sectors and activities. It is therefore incumbent on Nigeria as the largest economy in the free trade area and with possibly the largest assemblage of the finest economic minds to begin to think through what all these developments mean for us nationally and regionally. The AFTA is expected to bring about a number of benefits to producers, to consumers and countries alike. The hope is that African producers would benefit from access to cheaper imports and intermediate goods as well as larger markets for their products while consumers have access to cheaper goods and a broader variety of products. On their part, African economies should experience some gains from trade and further benefit from removing some of the more onerous requirements of belonging to multiple and overlapping trade agreements within the continent. The Economic Commission for Africa has estimated that with full liberalization, intra-African trade will increase by 52.3% as compared to a situation without the free trade agreements. This will be by 2022. Such an increase means that African economies will benefit from the growth that often accompanies increased trade flows. First, and I think the very first question that we are to address is where are we in the journey with the African continental free trade agreements? Where exactly are we today in that regard? It's probably worth noting that Nigeria played a very active role in the negotiations that brought the free trade agreement into being, and the main intensive stages were chaired by the late Ambassador Cheyedu Osakwe, who was then the Director General of the Nigeria Office for Trade Negotiations. The creation of the Office of Trade Negotiations was a deliberate decision by this government to change our approach to trade negotiations by ensuring that our participation is underpinned by top-class technical knowledge and adequate preparations. A considerable amount of work had been done before the suspension of activities relating to the operationalization of the free trade agreement. Work was ongoing on the shadow of tariff concessions for trading goods and trading services and for rules of origin. For instance, it had been agreed that the shadow of tariff concessions would permit 10% of tariff lines of member states to be included in an exclusion list that is not subject to liberalization, and a sensitive products list which is subject to negotiated liberalization. Just to emphasize the point, the member states agreed that 10% of tariff lines, 10% of items, could come under a special category, an exclusion list. So for example, if we felt that we didn't want to liberalize trade in rice, as an example, or trade in soy beans, or trade in so-called, we could put it under that 10% tariff line, which would not be subject. It would be an exclusion list and would not be subject to liberalization. There's also a sensitive products list, which is a list that we would agree to negotiate liberalization. In other words, if not the automatic liberalization would agree to negotiate. These sorts of checks and assurances are put into the trade agreement to assure member states that you can, where necessary, protect certain items. You can decide as a matter of economic policy that you want to specialize in certain items, or you want certain items to be protected from competition, from external competition. And that is factored into the, that is factored into the trade agreements. Also, five sectors have been identified as the initial priorities for negotiations in trade services. And these five sectors are transport, communications, tourism, financial services, and business services. I just repeat that transport, communications, financial services, tourism, and business services. Similarly, product specific rules of origin have been agreed on 88% of product lines with work on key products like cotton, textiles, sugar, and automobiles still outstanding before the delays occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. So we have 88% of product lines, which have been agreed on, the rules of origin have been agreed with respect to 88% of product lines. Now, these rules of origin, as you know, are very important, you know, because one of the chief fears of those who have opposed the trade agreements is that what stops a country, a neighboring country, say, by a republic or Togo, from bringing in a Chinese firm, a Chinese company, that will simply establish itself there in the country and begin to sell its products, manufacture some products and sell those products under the free trade agreements, you know, just using Togo as a staging post or using Ben as a staging post, you know, and just transferring this, simply sending the goods to Nigeria or what stops any other country that just wants to sell its products and benefit from the free trade agreement from coming into any of our neighboring countries and establishing there and simply selling products. So the rules of origin have taken care of that with respect to 88% of products to ensure that we're very clear as to rules of origin, where the goods are originally manufactured is important in the free trade agreement. If they are not originally manufactured in the country, in one of our member state countries, then clearly they cannot benefit from the free trade agreement. Now all this work was disrupted by the outbreak of the pandemic, but it's essential to reach agreement on them before actual trading can start as specific details are required so that customs and customs authorities can make necessary changes and adjustments to their tariff books. Trading was supposed to start on the 1st of July 2020, but the takeoff date has now been shifted to the 1st of January 2021. So virtual meetings at the moment, what is going on are virtual meetings of trade negotiators, senior officials and even ministers, and many of these meetings have been held to keep up the momentum. But of course it seems that they are faced with several challenges in communications. In many cases they are done with problems of reliability and in some cases there's some worry about confidentiality in those transactions and this has somewhat hampered the virtual meetings. All these outstanding phase one issues would need to be completed before negotiations move to phase two, which will deal with the substantive issues of competition, policy, intellectual property and investment. And this is important, you know, the phase two is important because this is one of the very important innovations in the free trade agreements. Competition, policy, intellectual property and investment. Usually trade agreements under the WTO tradition don't necessarily include competition, policy, intellectual property and investment rules, etc. But these particular trade agreements are in the modern genre of trade agreements and you have a lot of pain, considerable attention to competition policy, to intellectual property and to investment rules. The immediate challenge is to bring the economies back to normalcy across the continent. And although Africa has been relatively fortunate in terms of the actual health damage of the pandemic, our business and trading populations will need assurances of safety from the virus before normal economic activity nationally and regionally will return to normal. Besides it to be difficult to restore full economic activities without facing the dangers of a second wave and further economic disruption. So business as usual it seems will only return when they have availability of a vaccine and or perhaps as some have suggested if the virus were just simply to disappear one day. But even this may like trade, even this prospect of a vaccine and the use of a vaccine may like trade be affected by the power configurations between the global south just roughly speaking and the north between the wealthier countries and countries that are poor. Today one of our concerns in Africa is that because the wealthier countries have literally prepaid for the earlier supplies of the vaccines it might take a while for us to get immunized in this part of the world. Clearly we are a Gavi supported country and we're actively involved in Gavi's efforts to ensure equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines under the Covax initiative. Isn't it interesting that we have to talk now about a vaccine as part of trade as part of our economy you know and the availability of a vaccine because it is not available. We may indeed you know have further disruptions in economic activity. Just to explain Covax is the vaccine spiller of a project which is called the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator and is co-led by the Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, CEPI, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and the World Health Organization and they are working in partnership with developed and developing country vaccine manufacturers. So it is this is a global initiative that is working with governments and manufacturers to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines are available worldwide to both higher income and lower income countries. So this is a this is an alliance that we're working very closely with so that we also will be able to get COVID-19 vaccines at about the same time as other countries are getting or at least shortly thereafter. The challenge of rebuilding our economies is a real one and we had identified this as a major issue as we entered into the free trade agreements even you know in other words even before COVID-19 obviously rebuilding our economies and growing our economies has always been an important consideration. Infrastructure for example access to capital have remained challenges. GDP growth was minus 6.1 percent in the second quarter of 2020. In South Africa which is the second largest economy in which is the second largest economy on the continent, GDP has contracted by 51 percent in the same period so we are you know so we are faced with severe challenges with considerable challenges and we must address those challenges. It's obvious that if there is no production there's very little scope for growth but lack of growth and volatile market economic conditions also pose a great danger to the free trade agreements because the instinct of countries is to look towards and to resort to beggar by neighbor policies such as competitive evaluation, tariff barriers, when faced with such difficulties. Here in Nigeria the approach that we have adopted is a 2.3 trillion economic sustainability plan with a view to mitigating the shock, tackling vulnerabilities and creating and protecting jobs, rescuing businesses and repositioning the economy. Our projections showed that without the stimulus the economy was set to contract by about minus 4.4 percent and possibly up to 7 percent in 2020 but with implementation including ramping up local production we should be able to limit the negative growth to about minus 0.59 percent. Let me be clear that our desire to ramp up local production is not a call to alter key but rather an expenditure switching approach which can complement the free trade agreements desire to deepen original value chains. Indeed one thing that has become clear from our experiences of the last few months is the need for a vibrant and successful free trade agreement. The pandemic has exposed our dependence on commodity exports to other parts of the world and on the import of manufactured goods from them. As of 2017 intra-African trading goods was in the order of about 135 billion US dollars which was about 15 percent of Africa's total trade. This is in sharp contrast to trade in other regions which is as high as 70 percent in the European Union and 60 percent in the Asia trade agreements. The imposition of export bugs including on food items by some countries and the disruption of the global supply chains at the height of the pandemic showed just how exposed and vulnerable African countries are because of the limited productive capacity and a lack of regional value chains. So these are issues that we simply have to deal with and I think that the pandemic has helped greatly in showing us these vulnerabilities and that we simply must improve our current situations and we must ensure that we fully implement the trade agreements to enable us to interact with our neighbors by way of trade. We must of course continue to bear in mind especially here in Nigeria of course that the free trade agreements will not of course automatically bring about growth and prosperity. The reality is that if care is not taken trade liberalization can expose the Nigerian economy to unfair competition and sharp trade practices with adverse consequences for our producers who might have to close down their business series and for workers who will then lose their jobs. So it's a double-edged sword but of course the better picture is that these trade agreements will inspire growth will definitely serve our purposes but we need to be proactive if we are to participate effectively in them. This will entail improving our ability to produce and trade competitively in goods and services which is why the federal government is investing heavily in infrastructure, road, rail, port infrastructure and of course broadband connectivity. We're hoping that our broadband for all by 2023 will work and this is a very important part of our infrastructure and so we're talking to states to state governments to reduce their tariffs or completely erase right of way tariffs that they impose on broadband infrastructure and of course the argument is that if there are no right of way tariffs and private sector individuals can lay their broadband infrastructure it will be much obviously the economic benefits are greater than whatever little IGR can be derived from right of way charges on broadband infrastructure. So these are some of the infrastructure initiatives that we think are crucial to be able to benefit maximally from the free trade agreements. It's also why we're taking active steps to improve the business environment and to facilitate trade across our borders including through the implementation of the national trading platform or the single windows project. Part of that project is the installation of scanners in all of our ports, seaports, airports and our land borders as well. The national trading platform is a very important part of our preparations for the AFCTA. This involves a port community project of course there's a customs aspect of it and this is particularly crucial because it means that all of our trade imports and exports and all of our trade will come through a single platform which of course is technologically powered and it's an electronic platform it will enable us to skip a lot of the processes that slow down imports a lot of the processes that make trading export and import difficult tracking cargo inspecting cargo etc will become much much easier especially because of the benefit of technology. Just about two weeks ago the federal executive council approved an important aspect of it of the trading platform which is the customs segment of it the customs electronic platform and we hope that we would be able to achieve this in the next two in the next two years we hope we'll be able to achieve the full implementation of the national trading platform. Government also realizes of course that it needs to be able to enforce trade rules and apply trade remedies so that our partners in the free trade agreement especially our neighbors don't take on due advantage of our large market. We appreciate that the border closure for example has caused difficulties not just for our neighbors but for many of our businesses and as you probably have heard active steps have been taken to resolve the situation especially by consulting closely with neighboring and approximate countries to address the issues of concern to us especially on bridal smuggling into the country. You probably also wish to know that the National Action Committee of the implementation of the free trade agreement which is chaired by our own Honourable Minister of Industry Trade and Investment is already actively seized with these matters so if the AFTA is to achieve the desired objectives then it's also very important that Nigeria should push for the implementation of complementary programs and protocols including the protocol on free movement of persons the Pan-African Payment Systems and the sectoral program and the other sectoral programs. Quite unlike the free trade agreements the protocol on free movement of persons is not gathering the desired pace of ratification and this is not surprising because of the fear of migrants out competing nationals for jobs and the likely social tensions in recipient countries. We already see the kinds of tensions that are going on in Ghana with our with the Nigerian businesses you know so it then becomes easier to understand why the protocols of free movement of persons is not being taken on as enthusiastically as the other components of our free trade agreements. There's always that tension always that sense that foreigners would come and take over our jobs foreigners will come and take over everything that we own but the truth is that free movement of persons is key for trade he says no we have no choice if we are going to implement the free trade agreements we must have free movement of persons especially trading services such as tourism professional services and all that you know then it stands to reason that the success of the trade agreement itself in the medium term would require a faster rate of ratification and implementation of the protocol on free movement of persons. Similarly the establishment of the Pan-African Payments and Settlements platform by the AFRI Exim Bank long way to in creating the desired continental payment systems and enabling cross border informal trade which is estimated to be about 93 billion dollars per annum so there's no question at all that you know the african free trade agreements by itself is cannot work as it cannot work effectively without these other protocols and these other systems the protocol of free movement the protocol and then the continental payment systems which we hope which AFRI Exim is promoting. In the area of health the COVID-19 crisis has shown the importance of regional cooperation to come up with a continental resilience strategy to cope with similar shocks in the future a good example of this is the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention this is using digitally pulled procurement systems to order for chemical reagents diagnostic and medical equipment and this is important because orders for test kits and health equipment by african countries tended to be small and ignored at the height of the crisis so because we're able to pull our resources as african countries together and buy in bulk you know we cannot be ignored but as individual countries because our orders tended to be small we could be completely ignored so this cooperation is one that you know has yielded tremendous fruit and again is one if you like of the silver linings in the very dark cloud of the COVID-19 pandemic. Successful implementation of the trade agreement requires financing to address various implementation challenges and to promote arrangements in support of integration for instance in addition to making up for potential losses of tariff revenues african countries will face implementation costs including undertaking reforms establishing new trade related bodies improving and upgrading existing facilities etc in addition to these domestic measures there are also costs associated with establishing the secretary at the CFTA secretary and building regional infrastructure finding the resources to undertake these activities at a time like this when practically every country lacks fiscal space will of course prove to be very difficult for Nigeria and other african countries and I'd like to urge our economists to help with innovating financing solutions for some of our economies one important objective of the free trade agreements is to overcome the economic fragmentation of the continent by bringing the regional economic blocks together in a common agreement this being the case african countries should look to negotiating trade treaties with other parts of the world on the basis of the free trade agreements rather than through arbitrarily designed regional blocks the truth is that we should not allow ourselves to be learned into our arrangements we do not serve our long-term development objectives now that we have the free trade agreements it's the african free trade agreement it's important that we don't go back to our echoers agreements to commissar and all these other regional blocks and if we start because if we start negotiating along the same old regional blocks the major advantage of the african free trade agreement will be lost because we'll be fractionalized again we're fragmented again and we'll not gain the benefits of of this of being the largest free trade agreement in the entire world the african free trade agreement is the largest so we are dealing with the largest trade area in the entire world so there are huge advantages and one of the key points for african countries to note is that we mustn't go back to the original to our old regional trading blocks and arrangements and negotiate on that basis we'll certainly be short changing short changing ourselves in summary then apart from reducing the spread of covid-19 and mitigating its effect on the domestic economy nigeria must have an interest in promoting a trade agreement the african trade agreement that catalyzes regional value chains enables free movement of people and attracts investments and improves the continental payment systems as we seek to use the opportunities we must remain alert to the need to create conditions that will enable our businesses to better able to be better able to compete and to thrive within the african free trade area i think this is particularly important you know because being the biggest economy we have leverage we have leverage not just in negotiations we have leverage in in our own in in our size of the cake and so with so so for this reason we owe ourselves as a country a responsibility of ensuring that we create the right circumstances for maximally benefiting from the free trade agreements and and this is the and this is a task not just for the present government but for governments in the future because a trade agreement of course is dynamic it's evolving and there will always be challenges and our economies must respond to it as matter of fact we must begin to think and plan budget planning uh economic planning must take into account the afcta which is why uh the our new uh success of plan to the economic recovery and growth plan is one that will take into account uh the issues around the the african continental free trade agreements because we can no longer plan without taking into account the free trade agreements including permit me to make a to digress slightly and to make and to make this whole to the Nigerian economic society to be more engaged in public policy debates i find that very often uh some public commentators make assertions that have no basis in economic theory of practice and because they dominate the public space they contribute to public misunderstanding of economic principles and their application to public policy once the experts uh like the distinguished assemblage here do not contribute to public debates then the place is left open to charlatans and in the era of social media there is a lot of noise going on a lot of misinformation a lot of misadvice and all of that i know that there are of course doctrinal differences and that not every academic economist will write in a newspaper column or is even interested i i know that academics generally may even consider it uh beneath them to write uh to do newspaper columns but i'm told that Milton Friedman wrote a regular column in the newsweek magazine and that paul krugman who is of an entirely different economic persuasion continues to write for the new york times today i do not think we can afford to leave the space the way the communications is happening is going on the and the rapid way which ideas have been transferred and which ideas have been transmitted we cannot we simply cannot afford to leave the space and write only in academic journals so some of us should take up the conflict and help to shape an informed and reasoned national discourse on the economy i must again thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to this distinguished gathering of economists of our country thank you very much and i wish you very thank you