The Impact Of Sanitary And Phytosanitary Measures On The Agricultural Export Of Developing Countries

With the development of global trade liberalization, talks about agricultural products have become focus of attention. World Trade Organization (WTO) is actively reducing support and protection in the areas of export subsidies and market access to facilitate fair trade in agricultural markets. Domestic policies of members, however, still have great impact on the agricultural trade. As tariff barriers and other forms of border protection are progressively dismantled as part of the on-going multilateral and unilateral trade liberalization initiatives, the non-tariff protectionist barriers, especially the SPS measures by developing countries has drawn many attentions.SPS measures can protect their citizens, animals, plants and natural environments from being contaminated by pests and disease with standards, regulations and direct ban on imports. Given the less transparent nature of SPS standards, there is great likelihood of them becoming implicit barrier of trade. Countries that apply higher SPS standards and complicated testing and certification procedures increase the costs of importers and thus protect domestic industries.Since the Uruguay Round, the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (the SPS Agreement) has come into effect. The agreement demonstrates the necessary of protecting consumers. Meanwhile, it regulates that the use of these standards as a means of non-tariff trade protection should be confined to the minimum. Difficulties of developing countries have been taken into consideration in the Agreement and special provisions are constituted for them.The goal of this paper is to present the impact of Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures on developing countries in agricultural export sector and bring out approaches to deal with the problems that resulted from SPS measures. This paperconsists of seven chapters. It begins with an overview of the relations of SPS measure with developing countries' agricultural trade and related issues. Chapter two discusses the SPS measures as trade barriers. Then it identifies the problems encountered by developing countries in meeting the SPS standards of developed market in chapter three. In chapter four, the SPS agreement under the World Trade Organization (WTO) mechanism is introduced and the benefits and challenges of SPS Agreement to developing countries are discussed. In terms of the efforts made by developing countries and the possible assistances from developed countries, chapter five attempts to raise approaches to overcome the problems in this regard. The situation of China is put into special consideration in chapter six in order to make full use of the experiences and lessons of other developing countries and participate efficiently in the SPS Agreement. It is concluded in chapter seven with an overall review.