Egypt underlines African economic integration

Egypt Sunday reaffirmed the necessity of working hard to achieve full economic integration among African countries in a way leading to the creation of an African common market in 2025.

"Commodity trade and services should be liberalized among African states by more than the current eight percent," Egyptian Minister of Economy and Foreign Trade Youssef Boutros Ghali said in an address to the fourth ministerial meeting of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) that closed session in the Nigerian capital Sunday night.

Ghali underscored the necessity of trying to achieve the utmost benefit from regional groupings and agreements signed between African and non-African states.

He also drew attention to the exigency of coordinating African attitudes towards the issues that will be discussed at the fourth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), due to be held in Doha in November.

The resolutions adopted by the Abuja conference stressed the necessity of sticking to the multilateral trade system so as to make the process of amalgamating the African economy into the global one an easy task.