Evaluation of non-tariff measures for African agricultural exports to the EU in a CGE framework

This paper evaluates the role of Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) on agro-food trade between the EU and Africa. Given that the effects of NTMs cannot be generalised across products and regions. The analysis considers several agricultural and horticultural products exported from Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Morocco, Uganda and South Africa. In five countries 95 exporters have been interviewed to obtain first hand information on obstacles to exports in five main topics: taxes and subsidies, customs and procedures, standards and regulations, specific limitations, and distribution chain and infrastructure. Indices corresponding to these main topics have been built. These indices are integrated into an econometric analysis based on the approach presented by Fugazza (2008) to obtain estimates of the NTM effects on bilateral trade between the EU and the African countries. Furthermore the values obtained from the econometric analysis were transformed in ad valorem tariffs (AVEs), and introduced into a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to study the effects of their presence and removal. The results of the simulations indicate the potential of removing selected obstacles. From the econometric results, findings point to an overall positive effect of standards and regulations, as well as on the improvements on the transportation, packaging, handling, preserving applied on African agricultural products. These findings add empirical evidence to the current nearly non existent information on the effects of NTM on bilateral flows from African agri-products into the EU. These findings support also previous theoretical studies in which positive impacts are expected when standards and improvements on the agri-food export chain are set up (Beghin, 2001).

GONZALEZ MELLADO Aida Araceli;  GAY Stephan;  M'BAREK Robert;  FERRARI Emanuele; 

2012-03-30

Center for Global Trade Analysis of Purdue University

JRC58133