Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/1218.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Implementation of trade reform in sub-Saharan Africa : how much heat and how much light?

Author

Listed:
  • Nash, John
  • DEC
Abstract
Adjustment programs in sub-Saharan Africa have been somewhat less intensive in trade reform than programs in other countries have been. Implementation of trade reform overall, however (but not the most important reforms), has been better in sub-Saharan Africa. Retrogression has also been more frequent. As a group, the intensive adjustment lending countries made significant progress in the 1980s and early 1990s, but there was significant variation among them. For sub-Saharan Africa, progress has been more impressive in recent years then in earlier years. In many countries, adjustment did not begin until the mid-1980s and relatively few measures were implemented up front. For the franc-zone countries, underimplementation rates are lower in the most recent data, and by some - but not all - measures their openness has improved more in recent years. By virtually all measures, however, improvements over earlier periods have not been as great for non-franc zone countries. Reduced protectionwas largely offset by real devaluation in most country groups and, by most measures, incentives to produce import substitutes actually improved in the years immediately after the first adjustment loan. In more recent years, the incentives have fallen modestly. Using a new method for quantifying nontariff protection in terms of tariff equivalence, the author argues that, in general, countries are not in danger of de-industrialization from the rapid disprotection of import-substituting industry. However, franc-zone countries showed greater declines in incentives for import substitution because of their lower rate of real devaluation. One implication may be that their ability to reduce tariffs and nontariff barriers is impeded by their inability to offset them with devaluations as other countries did. Non-franc-zone countries reduced tariff-equivilant protection in recent years by 15 to 49 percentage points more than franc-zone countries. How open are the trade regimes at this point? The decline in tariff-equivalent protection, although not trivial, is insufficient to reduce the protection to moderate levels relative to deep reformers in East Asia and Latin America. The biggest problem is with foreign exchange allocation. Mauritius may be the only non-franc zone sub-Saharan country in which the currency is essentially convertible and has been for some time. This basic reform has not begun in most countries or has only recently been completed (Ghana).

Suggested Citation

  • Nash, John & DEC, 1993. "Implementation of trade reform in sub-Saharan Africa : how much heat and how much light?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1218, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:1218
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/1993/11/01/000009265_3961005130834/Rendered/PDF/multi0page.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Judith Dean, 1995. "From protectionism to free trade fever? Recent reforms in developing countries," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 369-385, October.
    2. Boockmann, Bernhard & Dreher, Axel, 2003. "The contribution of the IMF and the World Bank to economic freedom," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 633-649, September.
    3. Dreher, Axel, 2002. "The Development and Implementation of IMF and World Bank Conditionality," Discussion Paper Series 26352, Hamburg Institute of International Economics.
    4. Jones, Chris & Morrissey, Oliver & Nelson, Doug, 2011. "Did the World Bank Drive Tariff Reforms in Eastern Africa?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 324-335, March.
    5. Axel Dreher & Roland Vaubel, 2004. "Do IMF and IBRD Cause Moral Hazard and Political Business Cycles? Evidence from Panel Data," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 5-22, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:1218. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.