Reviewing Agricultural Trade Policies
To Promote Intra-OIC Agricultural Trade
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missing information. The WTO’s Regional Trade Agreements Information System (RTA-IS) has
been employed in this study as the major reference point for trade agreements while it covers
all RTA’s which are notified to WTO and in force. The list of agreements has 49,392 pairs of
country/country groups as observations.
1.1.3. Applied Tariff Rates
Within the scope of preferential trade agreements, countries may promise to provide lower
tariffs than their promised Most Favoured Nation (MFN) rate. In the context of the customs
union and the free trade area, the preferential tariff rate is set to zero for all products. Yet, some
preferential agreements may specify that signatories will receive a percentage reduction from
the MFN tariff, but not necessarily zero tariffs. Hence, tariff rates become differentiating tools of
countries’ trade policies, which may differ across partners for the same products. In order to
track the agricultural trade policies, “tariff rate implemented by importer” is utilized as one of
the main indicators.
Depending on importing country’s tariff schedules, customs duties may be based on specific
quantity limits, ad valorem rates or the combination of the two. An “ad valorem duty” is based
on the value of the product and expressed in percentage terms. An “ad valorem equivalent
(AVE)” is the equivalent percentage of a specific duty when tariff schedule is not originally
defined with percentage terms on its value. For instance, customs duty may be set considering
the quantity of the product rather than its trading value. In this regard, in order to compare the
agricultural trade policies across countries and product groups, AVE tariff rate has been
employed in this study.
The tariff schedule of a country contains a list of all products which can be imported. In line with
HS classification, tariff schedules are reported in national tariff lines. Most detailed universal
level of product classification is at 6 digits in HS classification, and tariff information for a given
country can be shared at sub level of these 6 digits in line with national tariff lines which differ
from one country to another.
Below, advantages, disadvantages, and limitations for each data source commonly used in the
literature are listed.
 World Trade Organization (WTO)’s Tariff Download Facility and Tariff Analysis Online
(TAO): There are missing OIC countries (i.e. Azerbaijan, Comoros, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon,
Libya, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan). Trade agreements
and their follow-up tariff rates are not up to date in some cases. It has just covered HS
classification rather than SITC Rev. 4. It has a user-friendly interface for downloading
and aggregating data.
 World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS): It has embedded conversions for different
product classifications and also covers SITC Rev. 4. Moreover, it offers consistent
classification over years even though countries use different classification as they report
their tariff schedules across the years. There exist inconsistencies considering data from
the WTO.
 UNCTAD-TRAINS (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development - Trade
Analysis Information System): It is not up-to-date; it ends in 2014. The lack of current
data is the main reason not to be referred further.
 CEPII – MAcMAP HS6: It is not up-to-date; it ends in 2007. The lack of current data is the
main reason not to be referred further.