تجزیه و تحلیل کاربردی تعادل عمومی آزاد سازی تجارت در بخش زمینی در مالزی و اندونزی

This paper presents general equilibrium evaluations of forest sector trade for Southeast Asian exporters. The four scenarios examined range from the 1994 Uruguay Round tariff reductions to a complete liberalisation of forest and agricultural products trade. We find that simultaneous reductions in forest and agricultural sector tariffs make Indonesia and Malaysia worse off. For Indonesia, this is due to the fall in forest rent and agricultural tariff revenues. Malaysia has the highest ratio of agricultural imports to total land-based sector imports, the rise in agricultural prices thus hits Malaysian consumers the hardest. We find that terms of trade effect omitted from the partial equilibrium framework may reduce the welfare calculations for Malaysia and Indonesia in the forest sector trade by as much as 106 and 58%, respectively. This points to the importance of general equilibrium modelling in the logging industry. The same applies to other sector specific analyses where trade is concentrated between few countries.

Southeast Asia has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, with land-based activities, such as agriculture and forestry, being amongst the most important causes. Misguided government policies have been blamed for the high rate of deforestation in the region. The policies have not only distorted outputs and trade along the vertical wood production chain but also distorted land use incentives across sectors. In this paper, we examine the impact of the 1994 Uruguay Round (UR) agreement on the forestry and agricultural sector in Malaysia and Indonesia, using an applied general equilibrium model. The deforestation problem is particularly acute in Indonesia. Both Malaysia and Indonesia are the most forest-rich in the region and are major exporters of log, sawnwood and plywood for this region.1 Although CGE modelling technique has been used by many studies to examine the impact of the Uruguay Round, the sectoral breakdowns in the previous models have not been sufficiently refined to allow for analysis of the impact on individual forest industries (see, e.g., Francois, McDonald, & Nordstrom, 1995; Nguyen, Perroni, & Wigle, 1995). A detailed breakdown of the impact of the Uruguay Round on each major wood industry has been carried out by Barbier (1999) using a partial equilibrium framework. His results show that the gains to total forest products trade range between US$0.46 and US$0.59 billion or 0.4–0.5% of the total value of forest products imports. Nonetheless, for vertically related industries like the forest products sector, the general equilibrium framework is more appropriate. In addition, our results show that the terms of trade effect omitted from the partial equilibrium framework may reduce the welfare calculations for Malaysia and Indonesia by as much as 106 and 58%, respectively. Similar to Nguyen et al. (1995), we find that importing countries gain most from the Uruguay Round trade liberalisation, with the greatest proportionate gains going to the Asian Importing Region (consisting of Japan, Korea, Taiwan Province, China and Hong Kong) at US$0.68 billion. Malaysia and Indonesia become worse off following the forest and agricultural policy changes. For Indonesia, this is due to the fall in timber rent and agricultural tariff revenues. Originally Indonesia had extremely high agricultural import tariffs (approximately 72%), which is subject to a 24% cut. Although Indonesia has agreed to reduce agricultural export subsidies, these have been small originally and, therefore, do not compensate for the big loss in tariff revenues. Relative to other regions, Malaysia has a very high ratio of agricultural imports to total agricultural and forest sector imports, thus the rise in the world price of agricultural products hits Malaysian consumers the most. In all tropical regions, forest rent falls while the returns to agricultural production rise. In this way, forestry is likely to exert less pressure on forest resources post-UR agreement, while the pressure for conversion of forestlands for agricultural uses is likely to increase. Our model shows that log production does not always rise following forest sector trade liberalisation as feared by some NGOs. The direction of change is dependent upon the world price of logs and the factor prices. The former will be affected by the market power of tropical wood producers; while the latter will be affected by policy changes elsewhere. Both of these can only be captured in the general equilibrium framework. As our results show, the terms of trade effect is significant in wood sector trade. Following on from this, the elimination of log export barriers post-UR will worsen the welfare of tropical countries. The model is described in Section 2, as well as the sources for the 1996 base year data. Section 3 presents the results from numerical exercises and Section 4 concludes.

When the Uruguay Round policy changes are implemented on the forest sector alone, we find that the welfare and terms of trade of all tropical regions increase. The welfare gain for Malaysia is US$200 million; while that for Indonesia is larger still at US$600 million.6 This is because Indonesia is the largest exporter of plywood (capturing 50% of the market share in 1996) which enjoys the largest fall in tariff rate out of the three forest products studied. Log production in turn increases to accommodate for the rise in demand from domestic wood processing sector. Our results show that the terms of trade gain in forest products market, captured by the general equilibrium model, raises the welfare of Malaysia and Indonesia by as much as 106 and 58%, respectively. The picture changes dramatically when the UR changes on the agricultural sector are incorporated. The welfare of all tropical regions deteriorates (e.g., welfare for Indonesia declines by US$180 million; while that for Malaysia declines by US$200 million). This is primarily due to the decline in timber rents and agricultural tariff revenues.7 Given that the returns to forestry declines relative to agriculture, the latter is likely to become a more attractive form of land use post-UR. Without secure property rights, deforestation caused by agricultural activities may become more problematic. Our Experiment II results also illustrate that log production does not always rise following forest sector trade liberalisation, as feared by some NGOs. The direction of change in log production depends on the general equilibrium effects on the world price of logs and factor prices, where the latter depends on policy changes elsewhere in the economy. Nonetheless, the adverse welfare results in Experiment II may have been exaggerated for two reasons. Firstly, many agricultural barriers are non-tariff barriers and the simulations are conducted using their tariff equivalents. This means that the actual fall in tariff revenues should be smaller. Secondly, the base-line agricultural tariffs have been exaggerated for many countries. Therefore, the actual reductions are smaller leading to lower welfare gains in the agricultural sector (Martin & Winters, 1995). The widespread use of log export barriers reduces the world supply of tropical logs and in turn raises the terms of trade for tropical exporters. The result in Experiment III suggests that there are some optimal tax level for log exports from tropical regions. We find that complete trade liberalisation in the agricultural and forest sector makes tropical countries even worse off than all previous scenarios due to the fall in tariff revenues and terms of trade. Since our welfare results are robust to sensitivity checks for Experiments I and IV only, our results should be viewed with caution. Our model has been kept stylised to keep the analysis tractable (e.g., the coverage of commodities are limited to selected forest sectors and the industrial sector has been omitted altogether; standard assumption of constant returns to scale production has been used etc.). Keeping these caveats in mind, our model serves to highlight two things. Firstly, the model highlights the importance of general equilibrium modelling in sector specific analysis, where market power exists. Our results show that simultaneous imposition of log export barriers confer positive terms of trade benefit to tropical producers. Secondly, the model highlights the implication of forest sector trade policy on land use incentives. The results show that the Uruguay Round policy improves the returns to agricultural activities relative to forestry. While it may be true that developing countries government give low priorities to environmental benefits of forests, the omission of the environmental impact from our analysis means that our welfare results may have been exaggerated.