http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/16/opinion/edharford.php
Yes, we have bananas. We just can't ship them.
Tim Harford The New York Times
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2005
WASHINGTON At this week's ministerial meeting of the World Trade
Organization in Hong Kong, negotiators have once again hit an impasse over how
and when to open the rich world's agricultural markets to farmers in the
poorest countries.
What few people have realized, however, is that poor countries don't have
to wait for the WTO. There is plenty that they can and should do to help their
own farmers to trade.
Imagine a dream scenario in which the trade ministers emerge from their
negotiations this weekend holding hands and proclaiming an end to all
agricultural protectionism. What then?
For, say, a banana picker in the Central African Republic, not a lot. The
trade barriers at the borders of the rich world may have disappeared, but if
our picker wants to sell his bananas abroad, he first has to get them onto a
ship bound for America or Europe.
That takes 116 days, and an incredible 38 signatures - each one an
opportunity for some official to collect a bribe. Something is rotten here, and
not just the bananas.
Sub-Saharan African exporters face, on average, delays of nearly 50 days
for each shipment. They must get roughly 20 signatures on eight or nine
separate customs forms. (These figures are all documented in "Doing Business in
2006: Creating Jobs," a report released in September by the World Bank. A
disclosure: I was an adviser to the report team.)
Part of the problem, of course, is that landlocked African countries are
linked to the outside world by long, decrepit roads and underdeveloped ports in
neighboring countries. But determined growers can move bananas along even lousy
roads.
The real problem is elsewhere: three-quarters of delays are the result of
red tape, not port handling or inland transport. These delays, caused by
senseless bureaucracy, unnecessary forms and archaic inspection practices, can
often be eliminated with a stroke of a pen by a country's chief executive.
Even the more sophisticated reforms, like introducing electronic filing,
or using software to guide sensible risk-based customs inspections, require
only small outlays. What's more, such reforms increase the interception of
smuggled goods and discourage corrupt customs officials.
The Group of 20, composed of developing countries like Argentina, Brazil,
China and India, has been pushing hardest of all for an end to rich countries'
agricultural subsidies and tariffs. Paradoxically, some of the most vocal
members of the group impose regulatory barriers that are just as crippling to
exporters in their own countries.
India's commerce minister, Kamal Nath, has called for rich countries to
"eliminate export subsidies as fast as possible." And so they should, but Nath
might take note that an Indian exporter needs to collect 22 signatures on 10
documents - that puts India in the bottom 20 countries in the world for letting
its own entrepreneurs trade across borders.
Celso Amorim, Brazil's foreign minister, has condemned farming subsidies
as "the most harmful single piece of commerce." The subsidies are indeed
repugnant, but Brazilian exporters need 39 days to get their produce onto a
ship, too long for some agricultural goods. It doesn't have to be that way.
China can get exports moving in 20 days, the United States in nine days. Danish
exporters can ship in five days.
We should wish the trade ministers well in their negotiations, because
agricultural protectionism hurts consumers in the developed world as well as
farmers in the poorest countries. But governments of poor countries must do far
more to help their own citizens by reforming the Byzantine obstacles that stand
in their way.
One day rich countries may finally allow poor farmers to sell them beef,
sugar or rice. It would be a disaster if their own governments prevented those
poor farmers from taking full advantage of that opportunity.
(Tim Harford, the author of ''The Undercover Economist,'' is a columnist
for The Financial Times.)
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