An Assessment of the Impact of a COMESA Customs Union

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) launched its free trade area (FTA) on 31 October 2000 and is in the process of forming a custom union. A Common External Tariff (CET) with respect to all goods imported into the member states from third countries shall be established and mai...

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Main Authors:	Sawkut, Rojid, Boopen, Seetanah
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	EN
Published:	2012
Subjects:	Trade Policy International Trade Organizations F130 International Agreements and Observance International Organizations F530 International Linkages to Development Role of International Organizations O190
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4919

id	okr-10986-4919
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-49192021-04-23T14:02:20Z An Assessment of the Impact of a COMESA Customs Union Sawkut, Rojid Boopen, Seetanah Trade Policy International Trade Organizations F130 International Agreements and Observance International Organizations F530 International Linkages to Development Role of International Organizations O190 The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) launched its free trade area (FTA) on 31 October 2000 and is in the process of forming a custom union. A Common External Tariff (CET) with respect to all goods imported into the member states from third countries shall be established and maintained. The purpose of this study is three-fold. The first purpose is to assess the impact of the CET. Here we lowered only external tariffs to all regions leaving tariffs within COMESA as they are now to reflect the real situation. In this scenario, we take into consideration sensitive products which COMESA members might want to exclude from the CET to protect their markets. The second purpose is to implement the COMESA FTA fully. That is, to remove tariff on trade within COMESA states totally. This part of the study will give us an idea on whether countries within COMESA are losing by not implementing the FTA and if so, by how much. The third purpose is to assess the impact of the CET in a fully operational COMESA FTA. The methodology used for this analysis is a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE)--more specifically the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) framework is used. Two standard GTAP closures have been modified to more realistically represent the African economies, namely the employment closure and the trade balance closure. 2012-03-30T07:30:23Z 2012-03-30T07:30:23Z 2010 Journal Article African Development Review/Revue Africaine de Developpement 10176772 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4919 EN http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Journal Article Africa
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	EN
topic	Trade Policy International Trade Organizations F130 International Agreements and Observance International Organizations F530 International Linkages to Development Role of International Organizations O190
spellingShingle	Trade Policy International Trade Organizations F130 International Agreements and Observance International Organizations F530 International Linkages to Development Role of International Organizations O190 Sawkut, Rojid Boopen, Seetanah An Assessment of the Impact of a COMESA Customs Union
geographic_facet	Africa
relation	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
description	The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) launched its free trade area (FTA) on 31 October 2000 and is in the process of forming a custom union. A Common External Tariff (CET) with respect to all goods imported into the member states from third countries shall be established and maintained. The purpose of this study is three-fold. The first purpose is to assess the impact of the CET. Here we lowered only external tariffs to all regions leaving tariffs within COMESA as they are now to reflect the real situation. In this scenario, we take into consideration sensitive products which COMESA members might want to exclude from the CET to protect their markets. The second purpose is to implement the COMESA FTA fully. That is, to remove tariff on trade within COMESA states totally. This part of the study will give us an idea on whether countries within COMESA are losing by not implementing the FTA and if so, by how much. The third purpose is to assess the impact of the CET in a fully operational COMESA FTA. The methodology used for this analysis is a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE)--more specifically the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) framework is used. Two standard GTAP closures have been modified to more realistically represent the African economies, namely the employment closure and the trade balance closure.
format	Journal Article
author	Sawkut, Rojid Boopen, Seetanah
author_facet	Sawkut, Rojid Boopen, Seetanah
author_sort	Sawkut, Rojid
title	An Assessment of the Impact of a COMESA Customs Union
title_short	An Assessment of the Impact of a COMESA Customs Union
title_full	An Assessment of the Impact of a COMESA Customs Union
title_fullStr	An Assessment of the Impact of a COMESA Customs Union
title_full_unstemmed	An Assessment of the Impact of a COMESA Customs Union
title_sort	assessment of the impact of a comesa customs union
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4919
_version_	1764393244583526400

An Assessment of the Impact of a COMESA Customs Union

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