Endnotes

¹Authors' calculation based on WDI (2009).

²Authors' calculations based on WTO International Trade Statistics (2007). The figures for LAC include MERCOSUR, CARICOM, and CAN.

³World Bank dataset on trends in average applied tariff rates. See http://econ.worldbank.org/ for more information.

⁴WTO International Trade Statistics (2009). The figures for LAC include MERCOSUR, CARICOM, and CAN.

⁵WTO Secretariat. See http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/region_e/regfac_e.htm for more information.

⁶According to the World Bank, between 1990 and 2003, 93% of private investment (by total project value) in LAC infrastructure went to just six countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Mexico) and was concentrated in telecommunications and energy sectors (WB 2005).

⁷In 1980, LAFTA gave way to the Latin American Integration Association (or ALADI).

⁸For more on this see Bhagwati and Krueger (1995).

⁹The WTO Doha Development Round or Doha Development Agenda (DDA) is the current trade-negotiation round which commenced in November 2001 in Doha, Qatar. Though its objective is to lower trade barriers to goods, open up services markets, and strengthen rules to mitigate against protectionism, the talks have been unable to overcome entrenched positions on major issues, such as agriculture, industrial tariffs and non-tariff barriers, services, and trade remedies.

¹⁰For recent surveys of trade costs across the world see Hummels (2001) and Anderson and Wincoop (2004).

¹¹On average, LAC countries' export and import requirements are more bureaucratic than those of OECD countries but on a par with those of Southeast Asia and the Pacific; LAC requires 6.8 documents for export and 7.3 documents for import, while OECD countries only require 4.3 and 4.9, respectively. In terms of import and export times, the region performs relatively well in comparison with other regions, but its costs remain one of the most expensive in the world (with the exception of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa). Within the region, Venezuela lags significantly, while Panama leads with an average nine days to import or export a product.

¹²The LPI ranks 150 countries based on a survey of operators (global freight forwarders and express carriers), providing feedback on the logistics “friendliness” of the countries in which they operate and those with which they trade. Feedback from these operators is then supplemented with data on the performance of key components of the logistics chain in the home country, resulting in an index based on a 1 to 5 scale (lowest to highest performance). Overall, the index shows LAC countries' performance lagging behind OECD countries, industrialized Asia, the PRC, the Middle East, and North Africa in most measures. Its weakest performances are in customs, infrastructure, and logistics competence.

¹³The index covers four main sub-indexes that include measures of market access, border administration, transport and communications infrastructure, and business environment. Each of the 121 countries covered by the index is ranked on a scale from 1 to 7 (lowest to highest performance). Again, the rankings show substantial variations within the region, with Chile ranked 19th and Venezuela 119th.

¹⁴Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Colombia.

¹⁵In LAC, manufactured goods as a percentage of total merchandise exports have risen from 24% in 1970–1979 to 55% in 2000–2007. However, this remains substantially lower than in Southeast Asia (80%) and the high-income OECD countries (79%) for the latter period.

Download this Paper [ PDF 546.2KB| 43 pages ].

Comment(s)

There are [0] comment(s) for this entry. Post a comment.