From
Business Concerns to Policy Action: Overcoming non-tariff obstacles to trade
The parallel session focused on the issue of
non-tariff measures, and was moderated by Dr
Anders Aeroe, Director of ITC’s Division of Market Development.
Non-tariff measures are of particular concern to
exporters and importers in developing countries, for whom they can represent a
major impediment to international trade and market access. Exporting companies
seeking access to foreign markets and companies importing products need to
comply with a wide range of requirements, including technical regulations,
product standards and customs procedures. Many of these are not intended to be
trade barriers; in fact some are often imposed by the exporting country.
The main conclusions of the session were:
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Small
businesses can face a variety of barriers related to NTMs ranging from
labelling requirements to safety and sanitary measures, as well as problems
with changing rules and regulations and time-consuming inspections.
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The
private sector itself can mitigate the effects of NTMs by actions such as timely
preparation of documents and providing detailed product descriptions to avoid
confusion at customs.
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Buyers,
suppliers and policymakers have a shared responsibility to address NTMs.
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Public-private
dialogue can help enterprises to deal with NTMs and policymakers to support
them.
Mr Stefan
Bederski
, Director and General Manager of
AgroexportTopara, Peru, told the session that exporting his firm’s products to
the USA and Germany involves extensive paperwork and a time-consuming,
bureaucratic process. He said it is particularly challenging for small Peruvian
companies such as his to comply with the new US food safety laws. His response
to the NTM problem is to focus on capacity building for his staff, and maintain
close contact with the trade promotion agency Promperu and his trading partners.
He said he believes there is a need for collaboration between the public and
private sectors, that guidelines, protocols and standards for exporters should
be provided online, and that exporters need government support in addressing
NTMs.
Mr Lucas
Murenzi,
Commercial Attaché at the Rwandan
High Commission in Singapore, said his government had realized there was a gap
between public and private sector perceptions regarding NTMs. To address this,
a public-private dialogue was established to involve the private sector in
policy formulation. The government accepted that the private sector needed to
be supported in complying with NTMs, through capacity building and information provision.
Mr Pan Sorasek
, Secretary of State at Cambodia’s Ministry of
Commerce, told the meeting that Cambodia, as a major agricultural food exporter,
needs to comply with measures applied by importing countries in order to
compete internationally. Describing the challenges his country faces, he said it
is only at the beginning of the process of introducing sanitary and phyto-sanitar
measures (SPS) and technical barriers to trade (TBT) measures. He emphasized
the importance of awareness building among would-be exporters, adding that the
cost of compliance with importers’ requirements is often prohibitively high for
enterprises. Looking ahead, he said Cambodia is seeking technical assistance to
put in place domestic infrastructure that allows easier compliance with
international SPS and TBT regulations, and has established private sector
forums and working groups to discuss business needs.
Mr Mondher
Mimouni
, Chief of ITC’s Market Analysis
and Research Section, briefed the audience on ITC’s ongoing initiative to conduct
surveys among businesses in more than 20 countries on NTMs. The survey covers
both exporting and importing companies identifying and analysing the issues
they face. In the 18 countries where the surveyed have been concluded to date,
it appeared that more than half of the issues identified were domestic in
nature, imposed by the government of the exporting companies.