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Reviewing Agricultural Trade Policies

To Promote Intra-OIC Agricultural Trade

145

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