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The September 2022 Rice Outlook Report contains the latest U.S. and global supply, use, and price estimates and projections from USDA's World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report.

Industry and financial profiles of MENA firms may underpin the observation that MENA country exports are below potential and skewed toward low value-added goods that are unable to spur rapid job creation and inclusive growth. To assess this link, the paper combines analysis highlighting external financing as a determinant of export performance, and analysis highlighting sector asset tangibility and governance. Why? Because high value-added sectors tend to have higher shares of intangible assets and to create innovative products requiring substantial research and development or investments, thereby making these sectors more dependent on external financing. Using sector- and firm-level export data with country-level indicators, the results indicate that countries with more developed financial sectors and stronger governance tend to have higher exports from sectors that are more reliant on finance external to the firm, and lower exports from sectors with higher shares of tangible assets. Interestingly, financial sector development boosts exports less in MENA than in non-MENA countries. To foster expansion of higher value exports, the results suggest a critical need for: (i) deeper financial sector development that strengthens market-based systems, such as asset registries and credit reporting agencies, and (ii) strengthening of legal and governance frameworks.

Increasing the trade integration of developing countries can make a vital contribution to boosting shared prosperity, but it also exposes producers and consumers to exogenous shocks that alter relative prices, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively. This paper discusses the short-run effects of trade-related shocks on households to capture the potential welfare impact on the poor. The discussion explores the channels through which trade shocks are transmitted to households in the bottom of the income distribution, namely through consumption, household production, and market-based labor activities. The degree to which price shocks are passed through from borders to point of sale is a key determinant of the gains from trade and the ultimate welfare impact. Trade changes in agriculture directly affect households through their consumption basket. Lower agricultural prices reduce the cost of consumables, but these welfare gains may be offset by lower earnings for households that produce these same goods. Poorer households tend to be net consumers of agricultural products, suggesting a net welfare gain, but agricultural wage workers could suffer from wage cuts. Because poorer households tend to consume relatively fewer nonagricultural products, that is nonessentials, any trade-related shocks to prices of nonagricultural product are likely to be transmitted via labor channels. Despite significant evidence that nonagricultural trade reform ultimately leads to job creation and enhanced productivity, the short-run effects can be mixed. The costs incurred by workers to transition to new jobs slow the adjustment of the economy to a new steady state. Labor mobility costs, which tend to be higher in developing countries and for unskilled workers, reduce the potential gains to trade by diverting labor market adjustment from its most efficient path.

Economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has averaged roughly 5 percent per year over the past decade, improving living standards and bolstering human development indicators across the continent. Stronger public institutions, a supportive, private sector focused policy environment, responsible macroeconomic management, and a sustained commitment to structural reforms have greatly expanded opportunities for countries in SSA to participate in global markets. In recent years, many countries in the region have benefited from an increasingly favorable external environment, high commodity prices, and an especially strong demand for natural resources by emerging economies, particularly China. Over the longer term, leveraging Chinese investment to support broad-based growth will require policies designed to boost the competitiveness of sectors in which China s economic rebalancing may create a comparative advantage for SSA. To date, few African countries have been able to benefit from large-scale Chinese investment outside the resource sector. However, as China s growth slows and its economy shifts toward a more consumption-driven model, it is likely that global demand for resource imports will slow as well. Countries with the most heavily concentrated export mix, particularly in the mineral and oil sectors are the most vulnerable to China s economic rebalancing and should be ready to adopt measures to mitigate the impact of negative terms-of-trade shocks. By contrast, as wage rates in China continue to rise and firms refocus their attention on domestic demand, countries in SSA will be well positioned to exploit emerging opportunities for investment in export-oriented manufacturing. Ethiopia provides an instructive example, as its inexpensive yet relatively skilled labor force, coupled with the government s proactive efforts to court Chinese investors, have enabled Ethiopia to attract substantial investments in labor-intensive industries. Infrastructure enhancement, workforce development, and good-governance reforms offer a promising strategy for many countries in the region. Although the establishment of industrial zones has yielded mixed results, several salient success stories warrant careful attention. This report discusses how Africa could take advantage of the untapped opportunities offered by China s progressively intensifying investment and trade ties with SSA. It is hoped that this analysis will enrich the ongoing dialogue between policy makers, private firms, and civil society regarding China s increasingly important role in the growth and development of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Although average Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) tariffs on imports from the least developed countries are very low; tariffs above 15 percent have a disproportional effect on their exports. Products subject to tariff peaks tend to be heavily concentrated in agriculture and food products and labor intensive sectors, such as apparel and footwear. Although the least developed countries benefit from preferential access, preferences tend to be smallest for tariff peak products. A major exception is the European Union, so that the recent European initiative to grant full duty free and quota free access for the least developed countries will result in only a small increase in their exports of tariff peak items. However, as preferences are less significant in other major OECD countries, a more general emulation of the European Union initiative would increase the least developed countries total exports of peak products by US dollar 2.5 billion. Although almost half of this increase is at the expense of other developing country exports, this represents less than 0.05 percent of their total exports. This trade diversion can be avoided by reducing tariff peaks to a uniform 5 percent applied on a nondiscriminatory basis. However, such a reform would imply no gains for the least developed countries, suggesting that the globally welfare superior policy of nondiscriminatory elimination of tariff peaks should be complemented by greater direct assistance to poor countries.

Kenya's economy has been running on one engine. Kenya's strong engine is domestic consumption, which accounts for 75 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Kenya's weak engine remains its exports, which have been declining sharply in relative importance. Kenya's top four main exports do not earn enough to pay for oil imports, not to mention other imports. It will be very difficult for Kenya to achieve high growth over an extended period of time because of its existing economic imbalances. Kenya needs to increase its export competitiveness. It is clear that Kenya's trade performance is below its potential. The objective of this overview is to provide some of that analysis and to contribute to the policy dialogue on the role of exports Kenya's future growth. This paper focuses on five issues: 1) overall trade orientation and export growth; 2) merchandise export trends; 3) merchandise exports by sector; 4) merchandise exports by destination; and 5) diversification. The growth of merchandise exports has been slow and volatile. The average annual growth rate of merchandise exports has been only 10 percent. And while countries such as Vietnam have has a distinct export growth trajectory with steady growth in merchandise exports year after year, Kenya's pattern has been rather volatile with a few good years followed by major falls. Export growth has been driven primarily by existing products in existing markets. Overall there has been little new product/new market discovery.

There is a growing consensus that what you export matters for growth (see for instance, Haussman and al. 2007 and Krishna and Maloney (2011)). This paper examines whether and to what extent Jordan and Tunisia, the two most globally integrated countries of the Middle East and North Africa region, are moving up the technological ladder. To that effect, we use two highly disaggregated panel export database (products captured at the 11-digit level) and a 'product-based' methodology that allows a mapping of products classified by technological content and their sector of origin. We find that Jordan and Tunisia have experienced contrasting dynamics over the last decade. Thanks to its large exports of pharmaceutical products, Jordan enjoys a much higher share of high tech products in its export basket (11.5 percent versus 5.4 percent respectively) but this share has been declining over time due to the rapid rise of exports of textiles products. In contrast, from a very low basis, Tunisia has been catching up thanks to a slow but steady rise in medium-high tech products (electronics and mechanical components) and a corresponding decline in the preeminence of exports of textile products. Interestingly, success stories identified in both countries are all associated with the establishment of an 'enclave' where transparent 'rules of the game' are credibly enforced with the help of an external policy anchor either through international agreements (e.g. Jordan's free trade agreement with the US and the signature of and compliance with WTO's Intellectual Property Rights) or the establishment of a 'special zone/regime' such as Tunisia's 'offshore' regime and Jordan's Qualifying Industrial Zone. This finding underscores the importance of overcoming institutional weaknesses and establishing transparent and rules-based Government-business relationships as a pre-requisite for successful global integration in developing countries countries.

Over the last decade, Kenya's society and economy have changed fundamentally and these deep trends will continue. Rapid population growth and urbanization will create many new challenges which need to be managed well to support Kenya's economic take-off in the medium-term. This fourth edition of the Kenya economic update argues that Kenya can turn the tide in turbulent times and make the most of the ongoing structural shifts. In 2011, Kenya will need to address short-term domestic and international shocks, including higher inflation, pressures on the exchange rate and, most importantly, a volatile political environment. The government will need to navigate through these shocks successfully and to continue with its economic reform program to achieve higher growth. At the same time, the government will be making major strategic decisions in Kenya's decentralization architecture which will shape the medium-term development prospects of the country. Economic success is possible, as the 5.6 percent growth in 2010 has shown. If growth will accelerate to an average of 6 percent this decade, Kenya will achieve middle income country status by 2019.

This paper analyzes the economic effects of agricultural price and merchandise trade policies around the world as of 2004 on global markets, net farm incomes, and national and regional economic welfare and poverty, using the global economy wide Linkage model, new estimates of agricultural price distortions for developing countries, and poverty elasticity's approach. It addresses two questions: to what extent are policies as of 2004 still reducing rewards from farming in developing countries and thereby adding to inequality across countries in farm household incomes? Are they depressing value added more in primary agriculture than in the rest of the economy of developing countries, and earnings of unskilled workers more than of owners of other factors of production, thereby potentially contributing to inequality and poverty within developing countries (given that farm incomes are well below non-farm incomes in most developing countries and that agriculture there is intensive in the use of unskilled labor)? Results are presented for the key countries and regions of the world and for the world as a whole. They reveal that, by moving to free markets, income inequality between countries will be reduced at least slightly, all but one-sixth of the gains to developing countries will come from agricultural policy reform, unskilled workers in developing countries the majority of whom work on farms will benefit most from reform, net farm incomes in developing countries will rise by 6 percent compared with 2 percent for non-agricultural value added, and the number of people surviving on less than US$1 a day will drop 3 percent globally.

This paper summarizes a new database that sheds light on the impact of trade-related policy developments over the past half century on distortions to agricultural incentives and thus also to consumer prices for food in 75 countries spanning the per capita income spectrum. Price support policies of advanced economies hurt not only domestic consumers and exporters of other products but also foreign producers and traders of farm products, and they reduce national and global economic welfare. On the other hand, the governments of many developing countries have directly taxed their farmers over the past half-century, both directly (e.g., export taxes) and also indirectly via overvaluing their currency and restricting imports of manufactures. Thus the price incentives facing farmers in many developing countries have been depressed by both own-country and other countries' agricultural price and international trade policies. The authors summarize these and realted stylized facts that can be drawn from a new World Bank database that is worthy of the attention of political economy theorists, historians and econometricians. These indicators can be helpful in addressing such questions as the following: where is there still a policy bias against agricultural production? To what extent has there been overshooting in the sense that some developing-country food producers are now being protected from import competition along the lines of the examples of earlier-industrializing Europe and Japan? What are the political economy forces behind the more-successful reformers, and how do they compare with those in less-successful countries where major distortions in agricultural incentives remain? And what explains the pattern of distortions across not only countries but also industries and in the choice of support or tax instruments within the agricultural sector of each country?

This chapter begins with a brief summary of the long history of national distortions to agricultural markets. It then outlines the methodology used to generate annual indicators of the extent of government interventions in markets, details of which are provided in Anderson and appendix A. A description of the economies under study and their economic growth and structural changes over recent decades is then briefly presented as a preface to the main section of the chapter, in which the nominal rates of assistance and consumer tax equivalents (NRA and CTE) estimates are summarized across regions and over the decades since the 1950s. These estimates are discussed in far more detail in the regional chapters that follow. A summary is also provided of an additional set of indicators of agricultural price distortions presented in chapter eleven that are based on the trade restrictiveness index first developed by Anderson and Neary (2005). In chapter twelve the focus shifts from countries to commodities, and all the various distortion indicators are used to provide a sense of how distorted are each of the key farm commodity markets globally. Then chapter thirteen uses the study's NRA and CTE estimates to provide a new set of results from a global economy-wide model that attempts to quantify the impacts on global markets, net farm incomes and welfare of the reforms since the early 1980s and of the policies still in place as of 2004. The chapter concludes by drawing on the lessons learned to speculate on the prospects for further reducing the disarray in world agricultural markets.

In a recent survey of European economic growth since 1950, Crafts and Toniolo (2008) conclude that incentive structures are a crucial explanator of comparative growth rates of the economies of east and west Europe. Pre-empting that, a 2006 report on trade performance and policies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia included as one of its key recommendations the need to reduce the mean and variance of the tariff equivalents of trade barriers, and in particular to reduce unilaterally the policy regimes' anti-export bias, especially in countries exporting primary products (Broadman 2006). To progress such reform in Europe's transition economies efficiently and effectively, and to see how recent policies line up with those of the European Union (EU), requires better information on the extent of reform during the past two decades and of current policy influences on incentives within and between sectors. Immediately prior to their transition to market economies, policies in the region greatly distorted producer and consumer incentives, especially for agricultural products. Those distortions have been reduced substantially in several countries, but large variations remain across the region and distortions appear to be growing again in some countries. Now is thus an opportune time to examine how policies affecting agriculture are evolving in this region, including as part of the adjustment to EU accession for ten of the transition economies in the region.

This study on Latin America is based on a sample of eight countries, comprising the big four economies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico; Colombia and Ecuador, two of the poorest South American tropical countries; the Dominican Republic, the largest Caribbean economy; and Nicaragua, the poorest country in Central America. Together, in 2000-04, these countries accounted for 78 percent of the region's population, 80 percent of the region's agricultural value added, and 84 percent of the total gross domestic product (GDP) of Latin America. The key characteristics of these economies-which account for only 4.5 percent of worldwide Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but 7.7 percent of agricultural value added and more than 10 percent of agricultural and food exports. The table reveals the considerable diversity within the region in terms of stages of development, relative resource endowments, comparative advantages and, hence, trade specialization, and the incidence of poverty and income inequality. This means that these countries represent a rich sample for comparative study. Nicaragua's per capita income is only one-seventh the global average, while the incomes of Colombia and Ecuador are one-third of this average. By contrast, the per capita incomes of Argentina and Chile average just one-eighth below and that of Mexico is one eighth above the global average. Only Argentina, Brazil, and Nicaragua are well above the global average in endowments of agricultural land per capita; the Dominican Republic and Ecuador are well below this average; and Chile, Colombia, and Mexico are a little less than one-third above the average.

This chapter begins with a brief summary of economic growth and structural changes in the region since the 1950s and of agricultural and other economic policy developments as they affected the farm sector at the time of and in various stages after independence from colonial powers. The chapter then summarizes estimates of the nominal rate of assistance (NRA) and the relative rate of assistance (RRA) to farmers delivered by national farm and nonfarm policies over the past several decades, as well as the impact of these policies on the consumer prices of farm products, using the project's methodology (Anderson et al. 2008). The final sections point to what the author have learned and draw out implications of the findings, including for poverty and inequality and for possible future directions of policies affecting agricultural incentives in Africa.

This chapter begins with a brief summary of economic growth and structural changes in the region since the 1950s and of agricultural and other economic policies as they affected agriculture before and after the various reforms, and in several cases fundamental regime changes, of the past half-century. It then summarizes new estimates of the nominal rate of assistance (NRA) and the relative rate of assistance (RRA) to farmers delivered by national farm and nonfarm policies over the past several decades (depending on data availability), and of those policies' impacts on consumer prices of farm products. Both farmer assistance and consumer taxation is negative in periods where there is an anti-agricultural, pro-urban consumer bias in a country's policy regime. The final sections summarize what the author have learned and draw out implications of the findings, including for poverty and inequality and for possible future directions of policies affecting agricultural incentives in this part of Asia.

This paper suggests that decontrol of the gum arabic export market could increase export revenues for Sudan and raise significantly the income of small scale farmers. One of the key commitments made by the Government of National Unity under the Joint Assessment Mission framework was to "abolish the export monopoly" over raw gum arabic. This commitment has not been implemented. The objective of this policy note is twofold: (a) to assess the impact of the Government policy for the export marketing of gum arabic, (b) to identify options for changing the current marketing arrangements in order to increase and stabilize gum exports, capture more value added in Sudan and provide producers with a larger share of export prices.