The levy, a 0.5 percent tax on goods imported from non-ECOWAS countries, has been in place for more than 18 years but is now facing compliance and efficiency challenges.

Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the opening of an experts’ meeting in Accra to validate the draft regulation for the Community Levy Manual of Operations, the ECOWAS Commission’s Director of Budget and Treasury, Molokwu Azikiwe, stressed that the review is crucial to safeguarding the levy’s role as a reliable source of funding for regional integration programmes.

“The community levy forms about 75 to 80 percent of the programmes and activities of ECOWAS as a whole and is our main source of revenue,” he explained.

Azikiwe added that the protocol, after nearly two decades of use, must be updated to reflect new realities in trade and revenue mobilization.

“The idea was that after using this protocol for about eighteen years there is a need to amend it, prove it and update it to be able to address current trends in revenue collections,” he noted.

On the question of enforcement, he emphasized that sanctions for non-compliance remain a policy tool available to the bloc, though final decisions rest with higher authorities.

“The protocol has a provision for sanctions, but that is the decision of the Council of Ministers and eventually the Heads of State,” he clarified.

By revisiting the Community Levy, ECOWAS hopes to restore its financial backbone and ensure sustainable funding for regional programmes, while encouraging stronger cooperation among member states to close revenue gaps.

In his remarks, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Internal Services, Prof. Nazil Abdullahi Darma, stressed that “there is no better time than now to develop an effective operations manual.”