ABSTRACT
Agricultural trade was addressed directly for the first time in the history of the GATT/WTO trading system by the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) concluded in 1994. This agreement provides new rules and commitments in market access, domestic support and export competition. It requires for all non-tariff barriers to agricultural imports (except quarantine) to be tariffied and bound; these bound tariffs to be reduced in scheduled phases, and subsidies to production and exports of agricultural goods to be reduced. Since this was the first attempt of introducing order and discipline into the world of agricultural trade, URAA allowed for many exceptions (packaged in the variously coloured boxes - green, blue and red box). Although the intent of the URAA was to facilitate freer trade in agricultural goods, the average tariffs on agricultural goods (currently above 40 per cent) were not nearly as reduced as those on manufacturing goods (admittedly, manufactures have been through eight rounds of trade talks over a period of fifty years). In addition, tariff escalation in agriculture has still not been tackled seriously. With these large differences in the level and structure of tariff protection between agricultural and manufacturing goods now revealed, it is expected that further agricultural trade liberalisation will maintain a high priority in the next trade round (scheduled to begin by the end of 1999).
