The Vice President of the ECOWAS Commission, Damtien TChintchibidja has launched an appeal to member countries to comply with all provisions of the community levy protocol by remitting funds collected on behalf of the regional body.
She raised this appeal at the opening session of the 35th ordinary meeting of the Administration and Finance Committee of ECOWAS As she also registers a concern that the 3 withdrawing countries are impacting on the region’s integration effort,
The 35th ordinary meeting of the Administration and Finance Committee of ECOWAS was convened.
The purpose of the meeting is to review the implementation of community projects and programmes in order to assess the level of implementation.
As the meeting opened, the Vice President acknowledged the prevailing challenges in many member countries .
The withdrawal of the 3 countries will impact on the community levy as the 3 countries have already stopped remitting their statutory levies , these levies are the primary source of revenue to fund ECOWAS activities
The levy currently is 0.5 percent on imported goods from Non ECOWAS member States, collected by individual states and to be remitted to ECOWAS
On the financing and deployment of ECOWAS Counter terrorism force, TVC gathered that the meeting proposed an increment to the community levy or a payment of the outstanding contribution from countries that did not pay up initially.