THE Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), Mr Reginald Yofi Grant, has been appointed as an External Independent Member, for a two-year mandate on the board of the OACPS’ Endowment and Trust Fund (ETF) to represent the West Africa Region.

The appointment was confirmed at the 929th meeting of the Committee of Ambassadors (COA) of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS), formerly the ACP Group, held in Brussels on June 23, 2020.

In a release issued by the Embassy of the Republic of Ghana on June 25, it said the ETF was established to assist the OACPS to become financially independent by diversifying its funding sources beyond the assessed contributions of member states.

“The ETF is also one of the key elements of the future perspectives of the OACPS, which is geared towards re-inventing and repositioning the OACPS as a ‘fit for purpose’ organisation and an influential global player on the international scene post-2020, capable of securing the interests of its member states,” it added.

It said the fund which was formally launched at the ninth summit of the Heads of State and government of the OACPS, held in Nairobi and Kenya, from December 9 to 10, 2019 was attended by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Contribution
It added that Ghana had pledged an amount of 100,000 euros as her contribution to the fund in response to an appeal launched by the OACPS.

“Ghana has been an active member of the OACPS since its formation in1975, with the coming into force of the Georgetown Agreement signed in Georgetown, the Cooperative Republic of Guyana.

“Furthermore, the longstanding development cooperation between Ghana and the European Union (EU) has been framed around successive Partnership Agreement (PA) signed by the OACPS and the EU, the first being the Lome Convention of 1975,” the release said.

The release said as one of the most enduring institutions in the landscape of international economic diplomacy, the OACPS is today the largest trans-national and tri-continental organisation of developing countries on the international scene.

“Its 79 member countries from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific are bound together by the shared sense of history and a common vision of the future, with all of them, save for Cuba, signatories to the Cotonou Partnership Agreement (CPA), also known as the “ACP-EC Partnership Agreement” which connects them to EU.

“There are 48 countries from Sub-Sahara Africa, 16 from the Caribbean and 15 from the Pacific,” it said.