ABUJA Central bank governors and trade ministers from West Africa have reaffirmed "eco" as the name for the single currency to be adopted in 2004, an ECOWAS statement said Saturday.

The officials decided on the new name at the end of talks on monetary matters in the Sierra Leonean capital Freetown on Friday, the statement said.

The currency will be used by five of the 15 member countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Organization.

They are Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria and Sierra Leone - which agreed in 2000 to launch a second currency parallel to the CFA Franc, a mainly West African common currency pegged to the French franc and now the euro, AFP reported.

The new name for the currency of the second ECOWAS monetary zone had been proposed at an earlier meeting in Dakar last December.

The Freetown meeting urged ECOWAS heads of state to ensure speedy completion of the naming process in order to get public awareness programmes of the impending changes off the ground.

Talks on fine-tuning strategies to implement ECOWAS travellers cheques were also held during the meeting, it said.

The cheques were launched in 1998 as an instrument for facilitating intra-regional commerce and travel.

The statement said the meeting evaluated the implementation of an ECOWAS Monetary Cooperation Program which was adopted in 1987 to facilitate the realization of a monetary union for the region.

ECOWAS was established in 1975 to foster economic integration of West African region.