The AfCFTA Tariff Offers - Current State and First Insights

The majority of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement signatories have submitted tariff concession offers, as published on the AfCFTA Secretariat's website. More than a year after the AfCFTA came into effect, it is time to take stock of these submissions and conduct a first assessment of the data with respect to members' stances towards fostering intra-African trade through openness on the one hand and maintaining protection against competing imports and revenues from import tariffs on the other. Combining the offers with corresponding trade and tariff data, we find that there are both substantial data gaps and inconsistencies with the AfCFTA's trade liberalisation modalities and the trade classification standard. Constructing two tariff schedules, one which repairs the offers for compliance with the modalities and another that maximises the import tariff revenue retained as a benchmark, the study gauges each region's offer regarding the commitment to liberalisation versus protection. The analysis confirms that the modalities require regions to liberalise strongly but most opt to liberalise even more and earlier than necessary. Stances towards freer trade differ markedly between regions. Some tend towards retaining all possible tariff revenues or corresponding negotiation space while others directly and strongly commit to liberalisation. The constructed AfCFTA liberalisation categorisations are provided for download as input to update AfCFTA impact analyses with the latest information available on a likely AfCFTA tariff liberalisation agreement.