Unrestricted Market Access for Sub-Saharan Africa : How Much Is It Worth and Who Pays?
The European Union (EU), Japan, and the United States (US) have recently announced initiatives to improve market access for the poorest countries. The authors assess the impact on Sub-Saharan Africa of these initiatives, and others that might be ta...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2001/04/1121224/unrestricted-market-access-sub-saharan-africa-much-worth-pays http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19671 |
| Summary: | The European Union (EU), Japan, and the
United States (US) have recently announced initiatives to
improve market access for the poorest countries. The authors
assess the impact on Sub-Saharan Africa of these
initiatives, and others that might be taken. They find that
fully unrestricted access to all the Quad countries (Canada,
The EU, Japan, and the US) would produce substantial gains
for Sub-Saharan Africa, leading to a fourteen percent
increase in non-oil exports ($ 2.5 billion), and boosting
real incomes by about one percent ($ 1.8 billion). Most of
these gains would come from preferential access to the
highly protected Japanese, and European agricultural
markets, especially the heavily protected Japanese market
for meat, and certain cereal grains. The smallness of
Sub-Saharan Africa's trade ensures that the costs of
trade diversion for the Quad, other developing countries,
and the world, would be on the whole, negligible. One
concern, however, is that preferential access to protected
markets might lead Sub-Saharan Africa to produce goods in
which it does not have a global comparative advantage, and
the future erosion of these preferences might lead to
adjustment costs. |
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