Africa Region Working Paper Series No. 74

An Analysis of the Trade Regime in Bolivia in 2001:
A Trade Policy Benchmark for Low Income Countries

Abstract

This note evaluates Bolivia's trade regime in 2001, using the methodology developed in Hinkle et al. (2003) in "How Far Did Africa's First Generation Trade Reforms Go? An Intermediate Methodology for Comparative Analysis of Trade Polices." We find that Bolivia's trade policy regime in 2001 is the most open among the low-income countries analyzed to date using this methodology. Low maximum and average import duties; absence of tariff exemptions, non-tariff barriers, discriminatory domestic taxation, and export taxes; functioning duty suspension and drawback schemes; and timely VAT reimbursement for exporters' inputs make Bolivia an empirical benchmark of good practice trade policies for low income countries.

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