Specialists at the World Trade Organisation agricultural liberalisation talks in Geneva are calculating commonly agreed values for the various kinds of duties paid on traded foodstuffs.
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These can be so many US dollars per tonne of sugar, or euros per 100 chickens. But to simplify a deal on reducing these tariffs by certain percentages worldwide, one common way of valuing these charges is needed, so experts are converting duties into virtual ‘ad valorem’ tariffs set at a proportion of an item’s value.
The aim is to decide which existing duties are ‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’. WTO member governments have agreed a Doha deal will hammer the highest tariffs.
