Suchergebnisse

Economic opinion is in the process of re-interpreting low levels of uptake of non-reciprocal pre-ferential trade agreements (PTAs) partly in terms of administrative barriers to preference utiliza-tion. Primary amongst these barriers are Rules of Origin. This paper reviews the literature on Rules of Origin as administrative barriers to the utilization of preferences accorded to African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries under the Coutonou Agreement, before going on to ex-amine current revisions of EU PTA Rules of Origin. These are embodied in a new (so-called 'Cotonou+') set of rules for the interim EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and a second proposed set of rules for the EU's Generalised System of Preference (GSP) arrange-ments, including Everything But Arms. The Cotonou+ rules include some important concessions by the EU, especially for those ACP countries that do not have Least Developed Country (LDC) status, but are supposed to be re-negotiated within a fixed period in line the new EU GSP rules. However, the new GSP rules as revealed in the EU Draft Regulation of 2007 contain no real concessions for non-LDCs, and they introduce potentially trade-restrictive administrative require-ments. These rules are currently (July 2008) under reconsideration by the EU, but it is clear that this exercise does not cover these elements. For this reason, harmonisation of the Cotonou+ and new GSP rules may be a source a serious discord in the negotiation of full EPAs, a process which is supposed to occur during 2008.

This paper examines trends in agro-commodity trade over the decade to 2005, in relation to the changing patterns of import demand and price trends, globally and in Developing Asia. It also examines the performance of 'commodity-dependent developing countries' (CDDCs) in agrocommodity trade. It finds that the 'commodity boom' does not extent to agro-commodities, although demand in Developing Asia is becoming an increasingly important factor, at least in less differentiated market segments. The agro-commodity trade performance of CDDCs is weak and apparendy declining. The paper goes onto discuss reasons for the latter and to suggest policies that may mitigate these trends.

The 'Africa Growth and Opportunity Act' (AGOA) was signed into US law at the end of August 2000. Perhaps the most important provision of this version of the Act (AGOA I) was that it conferred duty-free status to clothing articles directly imported into the US from beneficiary countries, until 30 September 2008. To command beneficiary status, countries had to meet a series of political and economic conditions, with the result that 38 countries are currently included in benefits. In addition, beneficiary countries have to have an export visa system approved by the US Customs Department. As of early March 2003, nineteen had done so. The only important clothing manufacturing country in Africa that remains excluded from AGOA benefits is Zimbabwe.

This article contributes to the analysis of the effects of globalisation on Africa's economy, on the basis of discussions of emerging trends in the industrial organisation of present‐day capitalism, and in the nature of the international trade regime emerging from the Uruguay Round. On this basis, recent and current developments in the Africa clothing and horticulture sectors are described. The paper argues that certain aspects of the current international trade regime provide scope for Africa to play a heightened role in the global economy in the these two sectors. However, the emergence of the global 'contract manufacturing' phenomenon, and the institutionalisation of process‐based food safety standards, implies that the main winners in this scenario will be large‐scale transnational enterprises.

In the last decade, much discussion of civil society in LDCs, especially those in Africa, has been based on two sets of normative assumptions, one deriving from the Tocquevillian tradition, the other concerning the nature and implications of globalization. This article criticizes both these approaches, on the basis of a restatement of the Hegel–Young Marx position on civil society. This is then used to compare and contrast the character of rural civil society in northern Tanzania in the 1950s and 1990s, allowing a critical consideration of the emergent properties of LDC civil societies, of the changing significance of the 'local' and the 'global' within them, and of the underlying sources of their transformation.