【英文】联合国报告：2019年非洲经济发展报告ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN Africa(220P)

Though tea production is largely centred in Eastern and Southern Africa, the regional  value chain extends well beyond COMESA, EAC and SADC. Many existing and potential  trade corridors span across different regional economic communities and might thus be  unlocked by tariff cuts envisaged in the context of the African Continental Free Trade  Area. Figure 21 (a) shows through box-plot diagrams21 the distribution of simple average  tariffs levied by African countries on tea imports, reporting the most-favoured nation  tariff rates and intra-African preferential tariffs in figure 21 (b). For each importer, the  difference between the most-favoured nation rate and the preferential tariff provides an  indication of the potential preference margin that could be accrued through the African  Continental Free Trade Area.

Two main observations can be drawn from figure 21. First, apart from a few countries  such as Egypt and South Africa, it appears that most-favoured nation tariffs remain  substantial in the African context, even for a product that is not particularly sensitive,  such as tea. This is especially relevant since many of the main African tea exporters  trade with key regional markets such as Algeria or Ghana and other ECOWAS  countries at most-favoured nation rates. In this context, the establishment of the African  Continental Free Trade Area could significantly boost intra-African tea trade, as it could  extend preferential treatment across existing regional economic communities, resulting  in sizeable preference margins. However, these potential gains do not depend solely on  supply responses from tea producers, but also on the capacity to broaden the range  of available products, notably by moving into green tea production to satisfy demand  in the Maghreb region and by enhancing value addition through blending, flavouring,  final packaging or the preparation of ready-to-drink tea (FAO, 2018a). Not all these  diversification options may be attainable in the short term, but some related activities,  such as green tea processing, packaging and blending, require relatively smaller  enhancements to existing productive capabilities.

Second, consideration of the prevalence of overlapping regional economic community  membership also points to some of the flaws of the existing configuration, which  could be addressed by the Continental Free Trade Area. Given the differential extent  of tariff liberalization in such communities, overlapping membership of different regional  economic communities has important consequences in terms of different tariff rates  faced by exporters, a situation with the potential to hinder the viability of regional value  chains, or at the very least, to shape their configurations in a suboptimal manner. For  instance, tea exports from EAC to Egypt are subject to different tariffs. This depends  on whether the exports originate in Kenya, which like Egypt, is a member of COMESA,  or whether they originate in the United Republic of Tanzania. As a member of EAC and  SADC, but not of COMESA, the United Republic of Tanzania is subject to the mostfavoured nation tariff.