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Rules of Origin across African Regional Trading Agreements: A Landscape with Measures to Address Challenges at Harmonization

Author

Listed:
  • Julien Gourdon

    (Université Clermont-Auvergne, CNRS, CERDI)

  • Dzmitry Kniahin

    (International Trade Centre (ITC))

  • Jaime Melo

    (Université d’Auvergne)

  • Mondher Mimouni

    (International Trade Centre (ITC))

Abstract

To become operational, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) must harmonize Rules of Origin (ROO) across Africa’s Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) along two dimensions: regime-wide rules and product-specific rules. This paper describes and evaluates these ROO across the major multiple-membership PTAs engaged in these harmonization negotiations. These PTAs include: The Agadir Agreement, the Greater Arab Free Trade Area, the Common Market for East and South Africa, the East Africa Community, the Economic Community of West African States and the Southern African Development Community. To this list we add available regime-wide information on two Free-trade-areas (FTAs): the Tripartite FTA and the AfCFTA. The paper makes three contributions. It provides the first comprehensive description of regime-wide rules (RWR) and product-specific rules (PSR) separately across the main African PTAs. This landscape is built up from the complementary work based on the rules of origin facilitator1 that has categorized the 850 textually distinct PSR across six selected African PTAs. Second, the paper proposes metrics to evaluate differences along three dimensions: (i) wording-based text analysis; (ii) distance measures to indicate regulatory overlap; (iii) ordinal index to measure restrictiveness based of RWR and PSR. Third, it proposes a dashboard for negotiators incorporating the classifications and measures developed in the text along with other indicators.

Suggested Citation

  • Julien Gourdon & Dzmitry Kniahin & Jaime Melo & Mondher Mimouni, 2021. "Rules of Origin across African Regional Trading Agreements: A Landscape with Measures to Address Challenges at Harmonization," Journal of African Trade, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 96-108, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jouafr:v:8:y:2021:i:1:d:10.2991_jat.k.201224.001
    DOI: 10.2991/jat.k.201224.001
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Paola Conconi & Manuel García-Santana & Laura Puccio & Roberto Venturini, 2018. "From Final Goods to Inputs: The Protectionist Effect of Rules of Origin," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(8), pages 2335-2365, August.
    2. Cadot, Olivier & Estevadeordal, Antoni & Suwa-Eisenmann, Akiko & Verdier, Thierry (ed.), 2006. "The Origin of Goods: Rules of Origin in Regional Trade Agreements," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199290482, Decembrie.
    3. Olivier Cadot & Céline Carrère & Jaime de Melo & Alberto Portugal-Pérez, 2005. "Market Access and Welfare under Free Trade Agreements: Textiles under," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 19(3), pages 379-405.
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