Developing country tariff binding

The limited representation of developing countries in the GATT Integrated Data Base (IDB) – 26 of the 94 developing country participants in the Uruguay Round - makes it difficult to provide detailed data on developing country tariff bindings. Representation of African countries, for example, in the IDB is limited to three countries - Tunisia, Senegal and Zimbabwe.

Average binding levels by region are provided elsewhere.

Latin America

In the Tokyo Round, Chile was the only developing country offering to bind 100 per cent of its tariff lines.

Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico and Venezuela bound 100 per cent of tariff lines (and of imports) upon accession to GATT during the period 1986-91 and, as a result of the Uruguay Round, 100 per cent of Latin America's tariffs are now bound.

Africa

Tunisia has bound tariff lines accounting for 68 per cent of merchandise imports. For Senegal and Zimbabwe the level is 40 per cent .

Asia

The average proportion of imports under bound rates in the East Asian group comprising Indonesia, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand is 77.3 per cent . The combined average for India and Sri Lanka is 52.2 per cent .

All WTO members bound 100 per cent of their agricultural tariffs in the Uruguay Round.

Bindings and Tariff Reduction in the UR by Country Group

	Industrial economies	Developing economies	Transition economies
% of imports under bound rates pre UR ( % )	94	13	74
% of imports under bound rates post UR ( % )	99	61	96
Outcome of the UR
Already bound duty free ( % )	18	1	12
Bindings with reductions ( % )	64	32	76
Bindings without reductions ( % )	3	26	1
No offer ( % )	16	42	10

Source: GATT 1994