Rice has long been one of the most protected commodities in world trade. Now the probable significant liberalisation of trade in rice is likely to have huge welfare implications for many countries dependent on its production and trade, particularly those in South Asia.

This book explores the poverty and welfare implications of this liberalisation for India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and identifies the effects on different groups within poor rice-dependent developing countries.

This book will be of great interest to researchers and policy makers, in South Asia and elsewhere, looking at the distributional consequences of multilateral trade agreements in terms of poverty and welfare within individual countries.

Mohammad A. Razzaque is an Economic Adviser in the Economic Affairs Division, Commonwealth Secretariat, London, United Kingdom.

Edwin Laurent is Adviser and Head of the International Trade and Regional Cooperation Section, Economic Affairs Division, Commonwealth Secretariat, London, United Kingdom.

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Background

1.2 The scope of this volume

1.3 Methodology for studying the impacts of different liberalisation scenarios

1.4 Papers in this volume and their main results

1.5 Concluding remarks

Chapter 2: Global Rice Trade Liberalisation: Implications from Some Alternative Scenarios

2.1 Introduction

2.2 International rice market: Some stylised facts

2.3 Methodology

2.4 Simulation design

2.5 Simulation outcomes

2.6 Conclusion

Chapter 3: Poverty and Welfare Consequences of Global Rice and Agricultural Trade Liberalisation for Bangladesh

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Rice and the Bangladesh economy

3.3 Methodology of the study

3.4 Simulation results

3.5 Conclusion

Chapter 4: Assessing Macroeconomic and Welfare Implications of Global Rice Trade Liberalisation for India

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Rice and the Indian economy

4.3 Basic modelling framework

4.4 Data

4.5 Simulation design and analysis

4.6 Decomposing the simulations

4.7 Poverty, welfare and inequality analysis

4.8 Conclusion

Chapter 5: Welfare and Poverty Implications of Global Rice and Agricultural Trade Liberalisation for Pakistan

5.1 Introduction

5.2 The rice sector and the Pakistan economy

5.3 The model structure and the database

5.4 Results

5.5 Summary and conclusions

Chapter 6: Impacts of Global Rice and Agricultural Market Liberalisation for Sri Lanka

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Rice and the Sri Lankan economy

6.3 The structure of the model and the Social Accounting Matrix

6.4 Policy experiments

6.5 Results of the policy experiments: Short-run model

6.6 Results of the policy experiments: Long-run model

6.7 Conclusion

Nazneen Ahmed is a Research Fellow at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Srobonti Chattopadhyay is an MPhil Researcher at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.

Roman Grynberg is Manager of the Economic Governance Programme, Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Suva, Fiji Islands.

Selim Raihan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Nitesh Sahay is a Resource Person and Project Supervisor at the Poverty and Economic Policy (PEP) Network, Quebec, Canada.

Rizwana Siddiqui is Research Economist at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad, Pakistan.

Sunil Thrikawala is Research Associate at the Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

Jeevika Weerahewa is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Business Management, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.