Files
Abstract
Efforts continue to revive the Doha Round of WTO trade negotiations. The potential for a successful outcome of restarted talks continues to rest on market access for agricultural products. Agriculture market access negotiations must deal with politically “sensitive” products that cannot bear the full weight of tariff reductions. The Uruguay Round created a precedent for sensitive agricultural products by requiring tariff rate quotas (TRQs) for a volume of imports to assure some increased market access. The objective of this paper is precisely to assess the impact of the sensitive products on agriculture market access for African Countries. The paper also simulates through a global CGE model what could be the consequences of the new tariff structure resulting from this formula and the treatment of sensitive products on African economies. Our simulations show that the inclusion of sensitive products would restrict the gains of African countries essentially because it would maintain the tariff peaks.