Egypt and the Uruguay Round

Bernard Hoekman and Arvind Subramanian

No 1597, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: The Uruguay Round will generally have a limited impact on Egyptian policies affecting goods, investment, and services. It will have a more significant impact on intellectual property, although this will take up to a decade to materialize fully. Insofar as this reflects a continuing defensiveness against liberalization, it does not bode well for a country that will be facing growing competitive pressures as the world economy becomes more integrated. But Egypt's Uruguay Round commitments do, to a large extent, lock in the policy changes pursued by the government since the late 1980s. In this respect, they are quite significant. Maximum tariffs have been established for almost all tariff lines, and the gap between these"bindings"and the level of applied tariffs is in most cases relatively small. This constitutes a level of commitment that substantially exceeds that developing country average. The government is negotiating a more far-reaching agreement with the European Union to liberalize trade on a reciprocal basis. Commitments by Egypt in the Uruguay Round can be seen as facilitating implementation of a Euro-Mediterranean Agreement. Such an agreement could facilitate further nondiscriminatory liberalization of Egypt's trade regime. Of particular importance in this connection is opening service markets to greater competition, where much remains to be done.

Keywords: Rules of Origin; Environmental Economics&Policies; Economic Theory&Research; Payment Systems&Infrastructure; Labor Policies; Economic Theory&Research; TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT; Rules of Origin; Environmental Economics&Policies; Trade and Regional Integration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996-05-31
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... d/PDF/multi0page.pdf (application/pdf)

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:wbk:wbrwps:1597

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().