Interactive Dashboard on Non-Tariff Measures for Palm Oil Sector

Research Grant, 2021

Abstract

The current development in trade liberalisation shows that countries worldwide have reduced their tariff rates significantly to promotes economic growths through trade activities. However, along with the succession of tariff reduction, the number of non-tariff measures (NTM) has increased and acted as a substitute trade barrier. The same can be said for the palm oil sector. The NTM is generally defined as policy measures other than the ordinary tariff rates that have an economic impact on international trade in goods, changing trade volume, prices or both. The rising number of measures imposed in recent times highlight the importance of NTM as the main trade policy instruments, which has a direct and indirect impact on trade. However, monitoring NTM are not an easy task due to the complex nature of NTM with various codes. The number of measures imposed also varies between countries. Moreover, the existing database that are commonly used to obtain NTM data are not user-friendly and not comprehensive database to access and review NTM on palm oil sector as it is designed for country level analysis. In addition, the existing database are design for tech-savvy researcher, thus it is difficult for beginner level researcher. Hence, this study has four objectives: to collect, update and restructure NTM data from UNCTAD Trains; to perform descriptive analysis on NTM on palm oil; to calculate the NTM regulatory distance for palm oil; and to develop a user-friendly and comprehensive dashboard on NTM. This study uses the NTM frequency index and coverage to conduct the descriptive analysis on NTM. The dashboard generated in this study are expected to benefits the industry by easing exporters to identify regulations (NTM) imposed in target market.

Project Leader

Tamat Sarmidi (Faculty of Economics and Management, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), tamat@ukm.edu.my)