Research Proposal: Sudan's Accession to the World Trade Organization: Impacts on Agricultural Markets.
Sudan has applied to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), and is currently negotiating its terms of accession to the organization. It starts the negotiating process by submitting a proposal for accession. Sudan is currently undertaking reforms of its all commercial laws to bring all its trade-related laws, regulations and procedures into conformity with WTO requirements.
Sudan faces a difficult food security situation. Food security concerns – which essentially mean the state of the agricultural sector – should be central to any discussion of trade policy reforms. Therefore, Sudan participation in this negotiation should be grounded in an analytical and empirical understanding of the expected effects of the WTO rules especially under the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). The main objective of this study is to assess and analyze the implications of Sudan 's accessions to the WTO especially in agricultural related aspects, with the following specific objectives:
- How the AoA commitments will change domestic agricultural policy
- Impact on domestic production, consumption and trade flows.
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Determining the sensitive areas for Sudan in the ongoing negotiations and identifying flexibilities that Sudan has under the current AoA.
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Identifying key negotiating issues and demand of Sudan by highlighting the priorities and main concerns in the negotiating process.
To achieve the study objectives, partial equilibrium analysis, namely multi-regional multi-market model will be used in addition to descriptive statistics.
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