WAMZ 2024 mid-year statutory meetings in Guinea assess monetary integration

The West African Monetary Institute (WAMI), in collaboration with the government of Guinea, hosted the 2024 mid-year statutory meetings of the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) in Conakry, capital of Guinea, from Monday to Friday, with six West African countries planning to create a single currency called "ECO" by 2027.

The five-day meetings assessed the implementation of this monetary integration policy.

During the meetings, officials and experts from Guinea, Ghana, Gambia, Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone examined issues related to macroeconomic convergence of WAMZ member countries. They also focused on trade integration, monetary cooperation, financial sector stability, payment systems and the exchange rate.

According to the technical commission of the monetary zone, considerable progress has been made to achieve monetary integration in the six member countries by 2027.

"The new roadmap projects the creation or official launch of this new common currency by 2027. But before that, there are prerequisites. So these different meetings are part of the examination and assessment of the progress to meet different criteria which are classified at two levels. We have the first-rank level and the second-rank level," said Mamoudou Toure, chairman of the WAMZ technical committee.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the WAMI, an institution of the WAMZ, support the six countries in their desire to achieve monetary integration. For these two organizations, the creation of ECO currency will be a great asset for the development of West Africa.

"We are driving this process together. We are driving it in the right way. There are few challenges and the challenges are not big. These are challenges that if we stay together, we'll be able to drive the initiative together. And I'm happy to tell you that we have gone far in terms of financial integration. The banking sector now is being harmonized, the non-banking sector is being harmonized. The insurance is being harmonized. We have a debt robust capital market initiative, as well as a domestic debt market initiative," said Olorunsola Olowofeso, director general of WAMI.

Of the four criteria defined by the WAMZ to achieve monetary integration, Guinea has only managed to meet two. But the Guinean authorities assured that the challenge will be met before 2027.

"Guinea has met two of the four criteria, namely the budget deficit related to GDP and the financing of the budget deficit by the Central Bank of the Republic of Guinea. The country is determined to continue its efforts to support the achievements and meet the other two criteria before the 2027 deadline," said Guinean Minister of Economy and Finance Mourana Soumah.

WAMZ 2024 mid-year statutory meetings in Guinea assess monetary integration

With the beginning of the cotton harvest season, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is anticipating higher yields from advancements in agricultural technology and mechanization.

Xinjiang is the largest production area of high-quality commodity cotton in China. The 2.47-million-hectare cotton growing area in the region has produced more than 5 million tons of cotton for six consecutive years.

The northern and southern parts of the vast autonomous region have different climates, different cotton varieties and also different growing periods. Currently, cotton picking started two weeks ago in northern Xinjiang, while the harvesting has just begun in the southern areas.

In Tumxuk City, located in southern Xinjiang, cotton farmers are using all-in-one harvesters to help them pick cotton, separate the flowers from the stalks and pack them into bundles.

"In the past, we picked the cotton manually. It took us more than a month to pick 100 mu (6.67 hectares) of cotton, and the cost reached 1,000 yuan per mu (about 2,106 U.S. dollars per hectare). Now, we use domestically produced cotton pickers to gather them, which have high efficiency and low cost. It now takes less than a day to harvest my 100 mu of cotton, with a cost less than 200 yuan per mu," said Turaxun Samat, a local farmer.

This year, Xinjiang has vigorously promoted the new cotton planting technology of drip irrigation under the mulching film at the appropriate emergence temperature, replacing the old method of irrigating before sowing. The technology can greatly improve the emergence rate while also saving water resources.

In addition, the precision sowing supported by BeiDou Navigation Satellite System and remote sensing monitoring by the agricultural big data platform have also been widely adopted across Xinjiang, contributing to the growth of cotton output.

"This year, a total of 1,057,800 mu (about 70,520 hectares) of cotton have been planted in Tumxuk City, and the unginned cotton yield is estimated at 451.4 kilograms per mu, an average increase of 11.7 kilograms per mu over the previous year," said Chen Yongsen, a member of the leadership of the city's Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

The cotton harvesting in Xinjiang is expected to end in early November.

Xinjiang enters cotton harvest season with higher yield expected