Customs

On 19 June 2015 the Secretariat of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) issued a report on its  members’ quantitative restrictions.

Twenty-seven members have notified the WTO of a total of 731 quantitative restrictions (QRs) on imports and exports, with most of the restrictions taking the form of import/export bans and non-automatic licensing procedures, according to a report prepared by the WTO secretariat.

The Secretariat report has been issued to help members better understand their notification requirements on QRs and the type of measures to be notified. It is based on notifications submitted by members covering all QRs in force for the 2012-2014 and 2014-2016 biennial periods.  Pursuant to a decision by the WTO’s Goods Council on 3 July 2012, members must notify all QRs in force at two-year intervals and any changes to those restrictions no later than six months from their entry into force.

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) requires the general elimination of quantitative restrictions, which include prohibitions and other restrictions on trade that do not take the form of a tariff or a tax.  However, QRs are allowed in a number of defined circumstances which range from general and security exceptions covered under Articles XX and XXI of the GATT, to several other WTO agreements (e.g. Balance of Payments, Safeguards, Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures, etc.). Members’ notifications on quantitative restrictions are compiled in a WTO database which is accessible to the public.

According to the report by the Secretariat, the majority of measures notified by members consist of import measures (66.5% of the total), which is practically two times those imposed on exports (33.5%).

In terms of the specific types of measures notified, most of them are: (i) non-automatic licensing procedures, of which 123 measures apply to exports and 211 to imports; (ii) prohibitions (e.g. bans of certain products), of which 84 concern exports and 224 concern imports; and (iii) prohibitions except under defined conditions (i.e. conditional prohibitions), of which 58 apply to exports and 73 apply to imports.

Quotas, either global or allocated by country, represent a small percentage of the total number of notified QR measures, the report notes.

In terms of product coverage, most of the QRs are concentrated in HS Chapter 29 (organic chemicals), followed by Chapter 84 (nuclear reactors, boilers, machinery and mechanical appliances; parts thereof), and Chapter 38 (miscellaneous chemical products), which have been cited 87 and 70 times, respectively.

The Secretariat report notes that, given the low number of notifications received to date, the information provided in this section is not necessarily representative of the universe of QRs being implemented by all WTO Members, but it represents a first step towards improved transparency of trade policy measures in the WTO.