آیا اصلاحات درایو تعرفه بانک جهانی در شرق آفریقا انجام شد؟

This paper explores tariff reform in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda between the early 1990s and early 2000s. Tariffs were reformed in an across the board manner consistent with implementing World Bank programs: the average tariff was reduced and the dispersion of tariffs was compressed, with the highest tariffs being eliminated. There is limited evidence of political economy influences on the cross sector pattern of tariffs and reforms, except for a tendency to offer greater protection to larger manufacturing sectors in all countries except Uganda. The technocratic reforms have diluted relative protection and political economy influences in all the four countries.

The majority of African countries have implemented significant liberalization of trade since the 1980s, with reforms related principally to import liberalization and initiated, at least, under World Bank policy-based lending programs. By the end of the 1980s, those sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries that had implemented trade reforms had eliminated many quantitative import restrictions and export taxes (Foroutan, 1993 and Morrissey, 1995), and subsequent reforms related mostly to further tariff reductions. The unweighted average tariff for Africa was reduced from 21.7% in 1995 to 13.1% in 2006 (UNCTAD, 2008, p. 7). The extent of trade liberalization in Africa, especially tariff reductions, is well documented, with some discussion of the response in terms of imports and export performance (Ackah and Morrissey, 2005, Morrissey, 2005 and UNCTAD, 2008). However, few studies have attempted to analyze the pattern of policy reform, in particular to identify factors that help to explain why tariffs are higher in some sectors than others, and have been reduced by more in certain sectors. This is the issue addressed in this paper, for four Eastern African countries—Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Policy choices determine the cross sector pattern of tariffs and tariff reductions, and political and economic factors influence these choices. To properly analyze this process would require extensive information on actors and their interests. Who decides policy (on tariffs in this case) and what factors do they consider when doing so? Who has influential access to these policy makers and what policy choices do they request? Such information is not typically available in detail, especially for African countries. Oyejide and Njinkeu (2010) provide case studies of trade policy making in SSA countries, but these focus on the institutional structures and lack data or analysis of actual policies implemented. Studies of trade policy in individual SSA countries rarely consider why tariff reductions took the form they did at the time they did, usually for the simple reason that adequate political economy and policy-making data were not available. Focusing attention on countries for which some relevant data are available can yield insights into the factors influencing tariff structures and policies in SSA countries. The basic data requirement is sector-level tariffs covering a period of time in which tariffs changed. The pattern of cross-sector tariffs and changes can be informative. Morrissey and Nelson (2004) highlight the role of the World Bank in influencing the process, notably by promoting and encouraging (at least) trade policy reform of an ‘across the board’ type: all tariffs would be reduced and initially the highest tariffs would be reduced most, resulting in a new pattern more narrowly dispersed around a lower mean. Section 2 considers the evidence for such a technocratic pattern of tariff reform in the four countries considered.

Most African countries reduced tariffs during or since the 1990s. The impetus for import liberalization came primarily from multilateral institutions, especially the World Bank; while they may propose an essentially technocratic structure of reductions, one would expect sector lobbies to try and influence the pattern of reductions, preserving at least their relative protection. This paper explores the extent to which political economy influences can be identified in the structure of tariffs and tariff reforms in four African countries, even if the reforms were essentially technocratic. Although we should not generalize from only four countries, the tariff reforms implemented are similar to most other SSA countries that had reduced tariffs since the 1980s (Ackah & Morrissey, 2005). The broad conclusion that the reforms followed closely the technocratic pattern promoted by the World Bank should apply elsewhere in SSA. Data limitations restricted the set of explanatory variables that could be employed and the number of countries that could be included in each piece of analysis, and required us to restrict attention to scheduled tariffs. Obviously this does not capture the full picture of protection for a sector. The widespread use of exemptions implies that actual protection may be less than suggested by scheduled tariffs, although as some countries use “special duties” to protect specific products we may underestimate protection. Furthermore, we are unable to allow for non-tariff barriers, although most quantitative restrictions on imports had been removed by the 1990s and our use of measures of the change in imports may control for this to some extent (as the presence of non-tariff barriers should restrict the growth of imports). Nevertheless, the structure of tariffs and tariff reforms are indicative of the cross-sector pattern of protection. We first considered descriptive statistics for the distribution of tariffs and how this alters as tariff rates were changed. The evidence supports a technocratic pattern of tariff reform: the number and level of tariff rates were reduced and the spread of the distribution was compressed, with the highest tariff rates being eliminated. In general, reforms were associated with reductions in the skewness of the distribution (in particular away from extreme high values) and in the coefficient of variation, often dramatically. The support for technocratic reform is evident in all countries, and consistent with them implementing trade liberalization reforms as part of a World Bank program. This supports the argument in Morrissey (2004) that conditional aid was effective in respect of trade policy. However, political economy influences may be present even within the broad pattern of technocratic reforms.