1 The study group includes the 30 independent small island and coastal low-lying developing members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) that are also members of FAO (Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belize, Cape Verde, Comoros, Cook Islands, Cuba, Cyprus, Dominica, Fiji, Grenada, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Jamaica, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Papua New Guinea, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Suriname, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, and Vanuatu) with the addition of Bahrain, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which are members of FAO but not of AOSIS.
2 The 29th Session of the FAO Conference, November 1997, (C97/REP); Plan of Action, World Food Summit, Rome, November 1996; Barbados Declaration, Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Countries, April 1994.
3 All monetary figures in this document are expressed in United States dollars.
4 According to the most recent data available from the IMF, International Financial Statistics Yearbook, 1998.
5 "Agricultural Production and Trade Opportunities in the Indian Ocean: Findings of Mission to Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles, 18 May to 9 June 1997," Commodities and Trade Division, FAO, 1997.
6 Market Access for the Least Developed Countries: Where are the Obstacles, OECD, 1997.
7 The other least developed SIDS are also ACP beneficiaries.
8 R. Sharma, The Impact of the Marrakech Agreement on Trade of Agricultural Products in ACP Countries, Commodities and Trade Division, FAO, April 1997.
9 This section draws heavily from FAO Technical Assistance and the Uruguay Round Agreements, Second Edition, FAO, Rome 1998, and in The Implications of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture for Developing Countries: A Training Manual, FAO, 1998.
10 The main exceptions to the general prohibition on the use of trade measures other than ordinary tariffs are (i) the special safeguard (SSG) provisions of Article 5 that are available only to countries that have undergone tariffication, and (ii) measures maintained under balance of payments or other general, non-agricultural specific provisions of the WTO Agreement.
11 As noted above, the AoA does not cover fish and fish products or forest products, however the use of export subsidies for these products is governed under the provisions of the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. For more information see I.J. Bourke and Jeanette Leitch, Trade Restrictions and their Impact on International Trade in Forest Products, FAO, 1998.
12 Those developing countries that subsidized exports in the base period are required to reduce budgetary expenditures on export subsidies 24 percent and the volume of subsidized commodities 14 percent from the base period over a 10-year implementation period.
13 This section draws from The Impact of the Uruguay Round on Agriculture, FAO, 1995.
14 J. Lindland, "The Impact of the Uruguay Round on Tariff Escalation in Agricultural Products, Commodities and Trade Division, FAO, February 1997
15 These include, for example, avocados, broad beans, dry peas, cashew nuts, chillies, figs and dates, garlic, ginger, hazelnuts, honey, mangoes, onions, pumpkins, sesame seed, water melons, etc.
16 S. Koroma, Prospects for non-traditional Agricultural Commodities: A Case Study of the EU, US, and Japan, Commodities and Trade Division, FAO, Rome, 1996 (mimeograph).
17 Market Access for the Least Developed Countries: Where are the Obstacles, OECD, 1997.
18 F. Yamazaki, "Potential Erosion of Trade Preferences in Agricultural Products," Food Policy, vol. 21, no. 4/5, September/November 1996.
19 R. Sharma, The Impact of the Marrakech Agreement on Trade of Agricultural Products in ACP Countries, Commodities and Trade Division, FAO, April 1997.
20 Includes fish and fish products and forest products.
21 "Assessment of the Impact of the Uruguay Round on Agricultural Markets," Committee on Commodity Problems, CCP 99/12, 62nd Session, Rome, 12-15 January 1999.
22 For details about FAO's technical assistance on Uruguay Round issues, see the FAO Home Page at http://www.fao.org
