Quantifying non-tariff measures in international agricultural trade: a tariff equivalent of technical barriers to trade on African horticultural exports to the European markets

Fresh food and agricultural products from sub-Saharan Africa meet few tariff barriers because of preferentialmarket access granted to ACP countries through Lomé andCotonou Act. However, non-tariff barriers are still seriousimpediments to trade. This paper focuses more specifically ontechnical barriers to trade (TBT) and sanitary andphytosanitary measures (SPS) on horticultural exports fromKenya and Zambia to France, Germany, the Netherlands andUnited-Kingdom. Using an extension of price-wedge methodthat takes into account imperfect substitution (on demandside) and differences in factor endowments (on supply side), weprovide a tariff-equivalent of a wide range of TBT.Preliminary results show that the tariff-equivalent of TBT isvery high for Kenyan green beans exports (more than 56%)while it is low for Kenya’s exports of peas and avocados andZambian exports of peas (less than 10%). However, there areno large differences between EU importing countries.