The impact of sanitary and phitosanitary measures on fruits trade revisited

Abstract

Sanitary and Phitosanitary (SPS) measures are imposed globally to guarantee the safety of food traded internationally. Nevertheless, compliance with such measures may be specially costly for certain exporters, jeapardising its international competitiveness. Furthermore, under the auspices of the Farm to Fork initiative of the European Union(EU), the expected implementation by third countries of “mirror clauses” in their production systems to guarantee level field with EU producers, might have additional trade costs and reconfigure trade flows to the EU. The current paper estimates the current cost of SPS measures in the international trade of fruits, and aims at shedding light on the effect of regulatory convergence using a structural gravity approach. The sample for analysis covers 72 exporters and 111 importers, for the period 2010-2020. Trade data from UN ComTrade and SPS data from UNCTAD TRAINS Global database on Non-Tariff Measures, are used, and aggregated to H2-digits. Preliminary results show that reducing regulatory heterogeneity in behind the border SPS measures, significantly reduces trade costs and favours those exporters more stringent in their SPS measures implementation.