The Impact of the Economic Partnership Agreements between ECOWAS and the EU on Niger

Abstract

Volume 6 • Issue 2 • 1000145 Bus Eco J ISSN: 2151-6219 BEJ, an open access journal Page 2 of 9 the world. An analysis has shown that about 10 products that Niger imports from the ECOWAS area and 15 it imports from the rest of the world are in competition with products of the same kind imported from the EU. The figures (Annex A1-A3) give a list of the products that Niger imports from the EU, the ECOWAS area, and the rest of the world. The aim of this study was to assess the economic impact, on Niger, of the trade component of the EPA negotiated between ECOWAS and the EU. The study's specific objectives are the following: 1) To identify the potential trade effects of an EPA on Niger in terms of trade creation and diversion by identifying the products and countries concerned; 2) To assess the impact of EPAs on tariff revenues and well-being by identifying the tariff lines that could lead to the biggest revenue losses, and the products that are likely to have the greatest effect on the people's well-being; and 3) To analyse the impact of EPAs on Niger's productive structures, as the WITS-SMART model [5] enables a distinction between the products for which an increase in imports from the EU would be the highest. The rest of this paper is structured as follows: Section 2 is an overview of the main issues in the EPA negotiations between ECOWAS and the EU. Section 3 presents the literature review on the consequences for Niger of the signing of an EPA between ECOWAS and the EU. Section 4 describes the state of Niger's economy. Section 5 describes the research methodology. Section 6 reports on the empirical results on thepartial liberalization of Group A, B and C products, while the last section presents the study's conclusions and recommendations.