Report

EFFECTIVE ADDITIONAL MARKET ACCESS UNDER SAFTA: COUNTRYWISE ANALYSIS 39
Table 4.1 Percentage of Tariff Lines Covered Under Negative Lists
Sl. Name of the Number of Tariff Number of Tariff Number of Tariff Therefore % of Tariff
No. Contracting States Lines for LDCS Lines for Non-LDCS Lines for All SAFTA Lines covered by
Members (single list) Negative List*
1 Bangladesh 1249 1254 24
2 Bhutan 136 3
3 India 763 884 17
4 Maldives 669 13
5 Nepal 1299 1332 25
6 Pakistan 1182 23
7 Sri Lanka 1058 20
*Wherever a country has two negative lists, the larger is considered.
effectively liberalised. That is to say, products in which
concessions are more than what they are at present.
For instance, if a country A gives zero duty access to
country B in a product X because of the AB Free Trade
Agreement, then even though country A binds its duty
to zero under SAFTA, there is no additional market
access for country B in product X because Country B
already had zero duty access for product X under the
pre-existing AB FTA.
Therefore products, in which tariffs can be said to
be effectively liberalised, are determined from:
• The sensitive lists of members.
• Whether or not the tariff liberalisation by a member
to another member is deeper than any pre-existing
concessions.
• It is important not to construe products which are
already trading at zero MFN duty, as products in
which SAFTA will create market access. Therefore,
it is examined whether products in which
concessions are made already have 0–5 MFN duty.
EFFECTIVE ADDITIONAL MARKET ACCESS:
RESULTS
Once the products in which actual concessions are
determined on a bilateral basis, the Effective Additional
Market Access or EAMA, is determined through three
measures:
1. The proportion of global value of imports of non
sensitive items (sensitive items refer to sensitive
items of the concession giver) for which effective
additional market access is created to the total
global value of imports of the concession giver.
What this measure essentially looks at is the
weight of the global value of the imports of the
lines in which additional market access is created
between any two members in the total global value
of imports of those items of the concession giver.
For instance, as can be seen from Table 4.2 (a),
items for which India provides Bangladesh effective
additional market access constitutes 85% of the
value of its global imports. This ratio is calculated
for every member in relation to every other member.
When considering the effective market access
created in terms of global imports India and
Pakistan are the two countries which provide the
largest EAMA as a result of SAFTA. While India
provides EAMA to the extent of 86% to Pakistan
and 85% to Bangladesh and Maldives, Pakistan
provides EAMA to the extent of 70–72% for almost
all the member countries. India provides only 1%
of EAMA to Sri Lanka, the reason being that under
the Indo-Lanka agreement India is already
providing substantial concessions to Sri Lanka. For
countries such as Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives India
has already nearly completely liberalised imports
from them hence the additional market access to
be created as a result of SAFTA is zero. After India
and Pakistan, Bhutan and Nepal provide the largest
EAMA to the member countries, with Bhutan
providing around 66–68% of and Nepal that of
46–52% of their global imports respectively. Both
the countries provide no EAMA to India since
concessions already exist under pre-existing trade
agreements. Sri Lanka provides market access to
the extent of 34–35% for all the members except
India. But this again is because of the
abovementioned fact of the Indo-Lanka FTA.
Maldives provides EAMA to the extent of only
35% of its global imports. This implies that
Maldives’s sensitive list contains products which
constitute 65% of its global imports. Bangladesh
provides the lowest EAMA to the extent of only
23% to the SAFTA members. This gives the