The Information Technology Agreement and World Trade

1
The Information Technology Agreement and World
Trade

• Bijit Bora
• Counsellor
• Economic Research and Statistics Division
• World Trade Organisation
• Geneva, Switzerland

2
Outline of the presentation

• Methodology issues
• Trends in ITA trade
• Interests of non-ITA Members
• Impact of the ITA on trade
• Summary observations

3
Methodology issues

• Commitments are tariff line
• Country commitments are only in flags in the CTS
• HS 6 as specified in the agreement is too broad
• Nomenclature concordance issues

4
Trend in world ITA exports
5
ITA trade by region, 2002
6
Major ITA traders, 2002
7
World exports by ITA membership, 2002
8
World imports by ITA membership, 2002
9
Major ITA products, 2002
10
Remaining tariff barriers

• Among ITA Members
• Implementation obligations continue to 2005
• Difficult to ascertain due to lack of precision
  on data
• Some ITA Members do not have flags in CTS

11
Remaining tariff barriers

• Among non-ITA Members
• Significant markets are Brazil, Mexico and South
  Africa
• Binding coverage
• Brazil and Mexico 100 S.A. 99
• Binding average
• Brazil 30.5 Mexico 34.6 S.A. 11.3
• Applied tariff rates
• Brazil 13 Mexico 13 S.A. 1.5

12
Avg. tariffs of Non-ITA Members by ITA product
13
Impact of the ITA agreement

• Very little work has been undertaken specifically
  on the ITA
• Broader work done on the impact of multilateral
  agreements in general
• Preliminary work using a basic framework,
  suggests the membership in ITA has a 10 effect
  on world trade

14
Summary and conclusions

• ITA products are important part of world trade
• Some transparency issues with respect to ITA
  obligations
• Difficult to quantify with precision
• Highly concentrated export structure, based on
  existing definition
• Non-ITA member barriers are high, but other than
  3 countries are a small share of world ITA trade