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After seven years of negotiations the Uruguay Round Multilateral Trade Negotiations were concluded on December 15, 1993. The Final Act of the Uruguay Round, signed at Marrakesh in April 1994, is wider in scope than any of its predecessors. The tariff cuts are deeper; non-tariff barriers are tackled more comprehensively; and for the first time two major sectors, services and agriculture, have been included in the negotiated agreement. While the Final Act covers agreements, decisions and declarations on a wide variety of subjects several of which will be of great economic significance to the world economy and to the economies of the developing countries, this study focuses mainly on the impact of the Agreement on Agriculture on trade flows and prices for the main agricultural commodities.
The approach to the assessment has been to re-run FAO projections for most of the main agricultural commodities to take into account important changes in national policies that have taken place since the projections were last done1 together with the Uruguay Round changes to be accomplished by the year 2000 (the great bulk of developed countries and over 60 percent of the concessions of the developing countries making reduction commitments). These new projections confirm earlier conclusions that prices in international markets will be 4 to 10 percent higher and point to significant changes in trade patterns. These are analyzed in Section III of the study. Section IV of the paper considers the impact of these changes on the four developing regions. Some special issues are covered in Section V. The methodology is briefly outlined in Annex I.