Technical or Non-tariff Barriers to Trade - Stages 1, 2, 3 & China Update

Summary

​Technical or Non-tariff Barriers to Trade - Stages 1, 2, 3 & China Update
Stage 1: A plethora of non-tariff (or technical) barriers and sanitary & phyto-sanitary (SPS) access measures are increasingly becoming impediments to  the trade in red meat.  Efforts to  address these non-tariff barriers (NTBs) has been constrained by a lack of  information on the potential benefits of alleviating their impact.  The diversity of issues also adds to the  difficulty of setting priorities for action by trade officials. This research  commissioned by MLA & AMIC identified the range of NTBs impacting Australian beef, sheepmeat and goat  meat and collated this information via building a database. The database  documented the NBTs and SPS measures in major importing markets of interest  to Australian red meat exporters.  It  distinguished between different types of red meat and different product  forms. Stage 1 involved input into the ensuing stages of this project and as such a  report was not released.  
Stage 2:  This stage of the project involved  reviewing the nature of the technical requirements to separate the NTB issues, sorting these into appropriately defined categories and subsequently  developing and applying a framework with selected strategic dimensions to  assess and rank the issues.  A key  component of stage 2 was to prepare indicative estimates of the industry  impact of the NTBs.  The analysis  identified 136 NTBs with significant trade restricting effects - with a total  impact value of $1.25 billion. This indicates NTBs are a major issue that  warrant an allocation of resources and thus support other complementary trade reform efforts.  Similar to Stage 1, this component involved  input into the ensuing stage and a report was not released.  
Stage 3:  The third stage of the  project developed a proposed set of priorities for action.  In addition, in order to establish an  industry consensus on priorities, it was important to elicit feedback on  the Stage 2 results and the proposed rankings, from industry participants.  A final report was subsequently prepared and distributed  to peak industry councils and the Australian Government (Department of  Agriculture & Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) but it has not  been released publically due to the commercial in confidence nature of the  findings.  
China  Update:  The  completed NTB research was revisited in order  to estimate the value of NTBs impacting  Australian red meat potentially destined for China.  The key components of the revision included: sourcing and incorporating data for Australian red meat  exports to China & Hong Kong; revisiting the assumptions used for the  impact estimates due to a shift in trade; incorporating 2 new NTBs (lack of  access for chilled beef and POE inspection); and accounting for a change in  cold-store accreditation arrangements.  The results  were delivered as a change in values from the Stage 3 output - the impact  value of NBTs for China rising from $180.9m to $320.8m. This in turn raised  the overall impact value of NTBs from $1.25 billion to $1.38 billion.  These revisions were provided to peak  industry councils and Government.