Agriculture and Trade Liberalisation : Extending the Uruguay Round Agreement / Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Format:

Book

Government document

Author/Creator:

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Contributor:

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Content Provider.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (1994 April 15).

Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

Agriculture and state.

Commercial treaties.

International trade.

Produce trade.

Uruguay.

Local Subjects:

Uruguay.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (151 p.)

Place of Publication:

Paris : OECD Publishing, 2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This report provides information on the average tariff levels and on the use of tariff-rate quotas, export subsidies and export credits by selected OECD countries for temperate-zone agricultural products. The implications of further liberalisation of the various instruments over the medium term are examined. The effects of further trade liberalisation of agricultural markets over the medium-term depend significantly on the modalities and prevailing market conditions against which the liberalisation scenarios are compared. On market access, although the largest impact on world prices is from tariff reductions, each of the current trade policy instruments (i.e. out-of-quota tariffs, in-quota tariffs, and tariff rate quotas) would have to be liberalised to obtain the greatest impact. On export subsidies, their current use is already at levels much lower than Uruguay Round commitments, and elimination would have modest effects for most commodities (except dairy products). This situation could change and further discipline on their use would prevent back-tracking. Export credits used by certain countries are also found to distort trade, although the effects on world markets and average prices remain relatively small, due to the small share of trade facilitated by these programmes and their small per-unit effect. Disciplines are necessary, however, to avoid even greater use of all forms of export competition policies. Countries have embarked on a new round of multilateral trade negotiations on agriculture. The challenge facing policy makers is to build upon the foundations of the URAA to further reduce trade distortions. This requires strengthening the disciplines already established and addressing weaknesses of the current agreement, such as those that have been identified in this report.

Contents:

Preamble; Part I. Tariff-rate quotas and tariffs in oecd agricultural markets: a forward-looking analysis; Summary; Introduction; The economics of TRQs; TRQs and fill rates; Tariffs; Empirical implementation; Scenarios; Differences between TRQBASE and BASELINE; Scenario results; Summary and conclusions; Annex I.A; Annex I.B; Notes; References; Part II. A forward-looking analysis of export subsidies in agriculture; Data from country notifications to the WTO; Summary of Aglink and the Outlook; Quantity controls or support prices; Results of the scenario; Key assumptions; Conclusions

Annex. Implementation of the export subsidy scenario in AglinkPart III. An analysis of officially supported Export Credits in agriculture; Introduction; Use of export credits; Subsidy rate of export credits; How defaults can affect the subsidy rate; Importers and liquidity constraints; Other uses of export credits excluded from this study; Export credits in world agricultural product markets; Conclusions; Notes; Glossary; Annex. Method and Data used to Evaluate Export Credits; References

Notes:

Published in French under the title: L'agriculture et la libéralisation des échanges : élargir la portée des accords d'Uruguay.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

1-280-08032-9

9786610080328

92-64-19629-3

OCLC:

642661252