**Table 9: Shares of Agricultural Trade in Agricultural -GDP by Income Group and Region, 1990/91 – 2006/07**

|||Agric Exports/<br>Agric-GDP(%)|||Agric Imports/<br>Agric-GDP(%)|<br>|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Group/Region<br>|1990-91|2000-01|2006-07|1990-91<br>|2000-01|2006-07|
|Industrial Countries|95.0|145.5|177.1|70.8|116.5|156.7|
|Developing Countries|42.3|51.3|55.0|33.4|48.1|60.0|
|East Asia & Pacific|42.5|49.8|70.7|23.1|33.6|42.2|
|Europe & Central Asia|29.4|50.9|59.3|52.4|62.5|84.1|
|Latin America & Caribbean|81.4|85.2|84.4|42.8|60.6|74.7|
|Middle East & North Africa|15.9|26.2|26.5|76.9|95.0|104.5|
|South Asia|6.4|8.9|13.1|6.8|10.1|17.3|
|Sub-Saharan Africa|29.5|43.2|40.9|16.9|28.9|35.9|
|World|51.1|63.9|71.3|39.7|57.3|72.9|

Notes: Trade ratios are computed as simple averages in the country groups. Due to the cases of agricultural GDPs are very small (less than 1%), some small countries or Island economies are excluded, e.g. Luxembourg, Brunei, Hong Kong (China), Macau, Singapore, Palau, Bahrain, Djibouti, Kuwait, Trinidad & Tobago, Seychelles etc. Sources: Based on mirror data from UN COMTRADE Statistics and World Bank WDI database.

Table 9 shows the ratio of exports and imports to agricultural GDP for selected subgroups of countries. First, unlike other tables, we use the unweighted averages for the subgroups because few countries would dominate the averages. These give equal weights to each country within the subgroups thus showing the average behaviour of countries. We also separated the country groupings by level of development, i.e. industrial versus developing, and by regions with developing. We have 6 regions identified.

Table 8 clearly shows that on average, there have been greater specialization and greater shares of both imports and exports for most subgroups of countries. Industrial countries show a large increase in their export and import ratios. This is consistent with increases in their exports and imports, and a decline in their real outputs. Thus, they end up with very high trade to GDP ratios.<sup>12</sup> Of course, as pointed out before, the existence of trade blocks such as EU and NAFTA lead to greater trade among each trade groups.

Trade intensities are much lower for developing countries. They have larger agricultural GDPs, and greater protection. Their agricultural GDP have increased during the 2000s. So the increase in trade intensities (trade to GDP ratios) is much more modest. They have increased to about 60 percent in 2006/07, compared to more than 150 percent for the industrial countries.

Among developing countries, South Asia has the lowest trade intensities, both for exports and imports. They were almost self-sufficient during the 1990/01 period with import and export to agricultural GDP ratios of about 6 percent. This is by far the lowest ratio for any subgroup. While their trade intensities increased, it was still 13 percent for exports and 17 percent of imports.

As expected, Latin America has the highest export to GDP ratio and Middle East has the highest import to GDP ratios. Latin America has emerged as a major exporting region, while the oil exporters in Middle East have become major importers.

Sub-Saharan Africa has seen its import to GDP ratio increase continuously. Its export to GDP ratio has increased between 1990/01, and 2000/01, but decreased since then. This is somewhat different than the other regions.

> 12 One should not forget that most of this trade is between industrial countries. Thus the expansion might not signify market penetration by developing countries.

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