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Brochure, flyer, fact-sheetWhy export restrictions should not be a response to COVID-19: Learning lessons from experience with rice in Asia and the Pacific 2020
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No results found.The spread of COVID-19 has created tremendous uncertainty on a number of fronts, including the availability of food supplies. In such a situation, countries might be prompted to restrict their food exports to ensure greater domestic availability in the short term. However, such restrictions can cause panic, leading to price surges on international markets, and a breakdown of food supply chains. During the food price crisis in 2007–2008, trade restrictions contributed significantly to price spikes for various commodities (45 percent for rice and 30 percent for wheat (Martin & Anderson, 2020). Price volatility led to social unrest in many countries and made it more difficult for the poor to afford food, especially nutritious food. This brief will discuss recent food export restrictions employed in the region, analyze their impacts, explain how export restrictions can hurt importers and exporters alike, and give examples of good policies. -
ArticleAchieving food security and industrial development in Malawi: Are export restrictions the solution? 2018
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No results found.Restrictions on staple or cash crop exports are frequently imposed in developing countries to promote food security or industrial development. By diverting production to local markets, these policies tend to reduce prices and increase domestic supply of food or intermediate inputs in the short term, to the benefit of consumers or manufacturers, which make them attractive to policymakers. However, in the long term, export restrictions discourage agricultural production, which may ultimately negate the short-term gains. This study assesses the economy-wide effects of Malawi’s long-term maize export ban, which was only recently lifted, and a proposed oilseed export levy intended to improve food security and support local processing industries, respectively. We find that maize export bans only benefit the urban non-poor, while poor farmers’ incomes and maize consumption levels decline in the longer run. The oilseed export levy also fails to achieve its long run objectives: even when tax revenues are used to further subsidize food processors, their gains in value-addition are outweighed by declining agricultural value-addition. More generally, these results show that while export restrictions may have the desired outcomes in the short run, production responses may render the policies ineffective in the medium to long run. Ultimately, such restrictive policies reinforce a subsistence approach to agriculture, which is inconsistent with the stated economic transformation goals of many Sub-Saharan African countries. -
Book (stand-alone)Trade reforms and Food Security. Country Case Studies and Synthesis 2006
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No results found.Between 1999 and 2002 FAO undertook a series of 23 country case studies to evaluate the impact of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) on agricultural trade and food security in developing countries. The objectives of these studies were to assess the extent to which the AoA commitments had led to changes in domestic agricultural policy, to evaluate the impact on trade flows (imports and exports) of developing countries and to assess whether implementing the AoA commitments had had any impact o n food security. An important finding was that for most of the countries in the sample, the implementation of AoA commitments did not imply any major change to domestic agricultural policy, including trade policy. The main reason was that most of the countries had implemented during the 1980s and early 1990s unilateral reforms including the liberalization of international trade, often as part of the conditionality of adjustment loans. Some of these were bound as part of their multilateral commit ments in Uruguay Round. In other cases, commitments were made in terms of ceiling bindings or reduction from bound rates which diverged considerably from existing applied levels. It became clear that in order to make a realistic assessment of the impact of trade-related policy reforms on food security, it was necessary to extend the analysis over a period that included the implementation of substantial unilateral reforms.
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