The single currency was one of the topics of the 56th ECOWAS Summit. (Photo Dr) Regions The process creation of the Monetary Union in West Africa, with the single currency in sight, if
we stick to the conclusions of the 56th Extraordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and< > ECOWAS government, held on Saturday in Abuja, Nigeria.
At the ordinary ECOWAS summit on 21 December, the Heads of State reaffirmed their declared will to do to create the future single currency from 2020. After the adoption of the name of this currency, "eco", there is
a few months, they took note of the proposals for the symbol of the said single currency and adopted "Ec"
as a symbol of the ECOWAS single currency (see point 16 of the final communiqué which sanctioned this
56th Ordinary Conference).
In addition to the symbol of the single currency, the Heads of State and Government adopted that the Central Bank
of West Africa (Bcao) is the name of the banking structure that will issue this currency.
On the issue of compliance with the convergence criteria, West African leaders congratulated the Committee
for "progress made in the implementation of the Single Currency Programme" and for "
the improvement of the state of macroeconomic convergence in 2019". However, the Conference "urges
Member States to continue efforts to comply with the convergence criteria'. These criteria,
it is recalled, take into account the control of inflation, deficits, debt, exchange rate fluctuations and
external reserves.
It is to be believed that the activities of the revised roadmap are stalling. That's why leaders
West Africans invited the Ministerial Committee "to take all necessary steps to ensure
accelerating the implementation of the revised roadmap and the reallocation of resources
financial financing of the Special Fund for the financing of activities essential to the creation of the Monetary Union ECOWAS in 2020. The Conference instructs the Ministerial Committee to take stock of its situation at its next session
ordinary," reads the final statement.
The process of setting up the single currency will also have to take account of the ongoing transformations
at the level of the Umoa monetary zone. The Conference, after hearing a presentation by Alassane Ouattara,
President of the Conference of Heads of State and Government, took note of the reform of the monetary zone
Umoa, which would facilitate its integration into the future ECOWAS currency zone.
As we can see, the implementation of West Africa's single currency is certainly not a decoy, but
several steps remain to be taken before the deadline set in July 2020. These include, but are not limited to, the determination
of the parity regime of this single currency the eco, the accessions of Ghana and Nigeria which have their own
currencies, cedi and naira.