The effects of agricultural trade liberalization under the Doha Development Agenda with special reference to the Asia Pacific region : a brief survey

Abstract

Agriculture has been the most protected and distorted sector in the Asia-Pacific region similar to many regions in the world. Many countries in the region are currently following a combined approach to agricultural trade reform. While many of them have been making some progress towards multilateral trade liberalisation through the WTO trade negotiations and regional trade liberalisation through RTAs, they have been successful in concluding a large number of BTAs. A growing amount of research is now being conducted on the effects of agricultural trade liberalisation. The main purpose of this paper is to survey the results of recent quantitative studies on the effects of Agricultural Trade Liberalization with special reference to the Asia-Pacific region under the July Framework Agreement or the “July Package” of the Doha Development Agenda, DDA (the decision adopted by the General Council of the WTO on 1 August 2004, see WTO, 2004, WT/L/579). Remainder of this paper is organised as follows. The key features of agricultural protection in Asia-Pacific are identified in the next section in order to provide the background. Section 3 briefly explain the historical evolution of using computable or applied equilibrium (CGE or AGE) models in quantifying the effects of multilateral trade liberalisation. Section 4 surveys the results of recent quantitative assessments of proposed agricultural trade reform in the July package under the DDA by employing large scale CGE models. The final section of the chapter is devoted to concluding remarks.