Uganda’s Revealed Comparative Advantage in COMESA

Miriam Katunze and Annette Kuteesa

Journal of Sustainable Development, 2016, vol. 9, issue 3, 192

Abstract: Most recently, Uganda increased its trade engagements with COMESA as demonstrated by its submission of accession instruments to COMESA Secretariat in order to access the Free Trade Area (FTA). It is envisaged that trade with COMESA can compensate for the low export demand elsewhere by enabling diversification of the export basket and facilitating value addition to traditional exports. It is also expected to enhance producer competitiveness and consumer welfare. Full exploitation of this requires information on where and in what commodities Uganda’s trade niche lies. This study assesses the country competiveness within COMESA based on the concept of Revealed Comparative advantage (RCA). The paper also evaluates the stability of Uganda’s RCA in COMESA from 1997-2014 using HS6-digit level export and re-exports data obtained from the World Integrated Trade System. Findings reveal that Uganda’s RCA is in all 16 industries at the product chapter level. It is stable in exports of animals, vegetables, food production, wood, textiles, & cloth, stone & glass and metals. Policies for further development of these sectors should aim at addressing sectoral challenges including the low productivity, marketing, and processing capacity in the animal sector, low capacity to test phytosanitary and sanitary certification in the vegetable sector. Additionally, tackling market and low production challenges for the textile sector and, high costs of production for the metals sector will further boost exports to the region.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jsd/article/download/58741/32336 (application/pdf)
https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jsd/article/view/58741 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ibn:jsd123:v:9:y:2016:i:3:p:192

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Sustainable Development from Canadian Center of Science and Education Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Canadian Center of Science and Education ().