The tariff equivalent of tariff-rate quotas - A case study applied to the import of an agricultural product in Romania

The paper presents one methodology of calculating the tariff equivalent of the tariff-rate quota as a particular case of a non-tariff barrier for an agricultural product imported in Romania based on recommendations in international literature. The tariff equivalent of tariff-rate quota of imports from the EU is approximately 35%, lower than the tariff outside the quota. Nonetheless this is considerable higher when compared with the Common External Tariff (CET). Elimination of the nominal protection level as consequence of the adoption the CET is expected to stimulate imports pressure especially from price competitive import partners both from EU (such as Slovakia, Belgium, Austria, Czech Republic and Italy) and non EU countries (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Croatia). A basic model forecasts that, with the lowered protection, annual imports will rise with at least 13.5 thousand tonnes, thus an increase of 23% compared with the average annual imports during 1990-2005.