Reviewing Agricultural Trade Policies
To Promote Intra-OIC Agricultural Trade
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Table 4. 51 Top 5 OIC Origin Countries of Thailand’s Top 5 Import Products
Exporter OIC country
Value of agricultural imports
from the country, million
USD, last 3-year average
% share in total agricultural
imports from the OIC
countries, last 3-year average
Indonesia 437.2 41.7
Malaysia 360.1 34.4
Pakistan 80.8 7.7
Maldives 41.4 3.9
Niger 40.7 3.9
Source: CEPII BACI, Eurostat RAMON, UN Comtrade, UN Trade Statistics, and authors’ calculations
Creating the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) has long been a target for the ASEAN. ASEAN
Charter was put into effect in 2008 to achieve that. ASEAN finally created the ASEAN Economic
Community (AEC) on December 31, 2015. This has an important effect on Thailand’s economic
policies, particularly its trade policy. ASEAN Economic Community 2025 Consolidated Strategic
Action Plan (ASEAN, 2017) complements the AEC 2025 Blueprint as a single reference document
in order to inform stakeholders of the key action lines to be implemented towards ASEAN
economic integration from 2016 to 2025. Vision and Strategic Plan For ASEAN Cooperation In
Food, Agriculture, and Forestry (FAF) (2016- 2025) is designed to guide ASEAN towards the
attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs), and together with the goals of UN Zero Hunger (ASEAN, 2015). ASEAN is an
important world producer and supplier of grains, particularly rice, and the world’s largest palm
oil and natural rubber producer, raising a significant volume of livestock. ASEAN is also a major
world producer and exporter of fish and related products. AEC intends to form a single market
and production base in food, agriculture and forestry.
Three out of the seven priority areas and strategic thrust of the Vision and Strategic Plan for
ASEAN Cooperation in FAF are directly related to agricultural trade policies:
 Enhance trade facilitation, economic integration and market access;
 Ensure food security, food safety, better nutrition and equitable distribution;
 Assist resource constrained small producers and SMEs to improve productivity,
technology and product quality, to meet global market standards and increase
competitiveness;
 Strengthen ASEAN joint approaches on international and regional issues affecting the
FAF sector
ASEAN’s recognizes external trade as a key driver of economic growth and prosperity. In order
to reduce trade costs towards competitiveness, ASEAN decisively shows the way to eliminate
trade hindering regulations and standards. It also attracts the attention to the need of sharing
equitably the gains with SMEs by avoiding their exclusion from the trade policies to be put in
place. The related action programmes intend elimination of NTBs, harmonization of
accreditation, inspection and certification as well as of standards and regulations, establishing
business linkages among the potential agricultural cooperatives and farmers’ organization,
integration of all major ASEAN food markets, strengthening of food trading system to provide
stable food supplies.
Tariffs
Pursuing the trade liberalization under the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and the following
ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement (ATIGA), merchandise trade is nearly duty-free with
quantitative and non-tariff barriers removed (WTO, 2015). In addition, WTO (2015) for