Creating one African market critically depends on addressing non-tariff measures.
This report aims at supporting the African Union’s goal of increasing trade to foster structural transformation. Using newly collected data, the report contributes to the understanding of Non-tariff barriers (NTBs) and technical measures in AfCFTA Member States and State Parties.
For Sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), regulatory similarity/dissimilarity is analysed across countries and vis-à-vis international and regional standards.
Section 2 explains how the NTM data was collected. This includes definitions and classification of NTMs, and data coverage.
In addition to collecting national regulations, data was also collected for international standards in the agri-food sectors, namely Codex Alimentarius, International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) and World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), and for selected subsector standards of the African Organisation for Standardisation (ARSO).
Section 3 then shows descriptive statistics of the data mapping. The section introduces various measures of regulatory similarity and dissimilarity, specifically the “regulatory distance” and indicators of over-regulation and under-regulation.
The results are visualized in geographical map-like graphs that show the levels of regulatory similarity across countries and vis-à-vis the recommendations of international and ARSO standards.
- Section 4 presents the results of an econometric analysis to estimate the impacts, or ad valorem equivalents, of technical measures and NTBs in Africa and the potential cost reductions from regulatory reform.
- Section 5 uses the estimates from Section 4 within a CGE model. This allows an assessment of the wider economic impact of the reform scenarios on overall welfare, GDP, wages, and country-specific as well as sector-specific trade growth.
- Section 6 concludes by summarizing the results and drawing policy recommendations.
