38 year, and the remainder (49 percent) at the end of the ten-year period. Each phase-out must encompass products (chosen by the restricting country) from four groups -- tops and yams, fabrics, made-up textiles, and clothing.

Other Sectors. Elimination of "voluntary" export restraints. According to the World Bank-SMART Database the US and EC each have VERs on over 400 tariff line products which cover such major sectors as metals, transport equipment, footwear and domestic utensils.

Table 12 documented the importance of industrial countries pre-Uruguay NTMs by showing the share of regional countries' exports that encounter these measures -- both in total and for all non-oil products.<sup>t8</sup> Overall, about 10 percent of all regional countries' nonfuel exports encountered NTMs with Egypt and Cyprus' coverage ratios the highest (32 and 16 percent, respectively) due to the relatively large share of temperate zone agricultural products, textiles and clothing in their exports.<sup>9</sup> (Box 8 provides more detailed information on specific Egyptian exports that encounter NTBs). Within manufactures, the coverage of textiles and clothing is particularly high -- over 40 percent of ME clothing (SITC 84) exports face these measures, as do 38 percent of textile (SITC 65) products.

As a result of the UR NTM concessions, the profile of protection facing regional countries' exports has been altered substantially. Post-Uruguay Round NTM coverage ratios should fall from their current 10 percent level to between 1 to 2 percent.<sup>2 0</sup> The average decline for Egypt will be dramatic -- the ratio will fall from 32 to approximately 2 percent. Essentially, this is due to the fact that all NTBs formerly applied to Egyptian and other regional countries' agricultural products, textiles, clothing and ferrous metals have been removed. As a result Low and Yeats (1994) estimate the share of all developing countries exports facing NTMs '<sup>8</sup> Coverage ratios show the percentage of trade in a product group that encounter NTMs. The measure has shortcomings (see Laird and Yeats, 1991). No trade, for example, may occur under restrictive NTMs -- this would cause the index to take zero or low values. The index is sensitive to the types of NTMs included in its computation. The coverage ratios in Table 6 were computed for the following measures: surcharges, variable levies, quantitative restrictions (including prohibitions, quotas, non-automatic licensing, "voluntary" export restrictions, and restraints under the MFA and similar textile arrangements and state monopolies), price control measures (including minimum, reference or basic import price systems, price surveillance and voluntary export price restraints, additional customs formalities and other entry control measures, and loc;.' content regulations.

'<sup>9</sup> Laird and Yeats (1991) surveyed published estimates of ad valorem equivalents of OECD countries' nontariff measures. Their findings indicate EC protection for grains is between 100 to 150 percent depending on the level of world prices while nominal rates of 200 to 350 percent occur for dairy products. Even higher ad valorem equivalents occur in Japan -- between 200 to 350 percent for rice, beef and sugar. Japanese NTM protection for wheat and barley exceeds 400 percent.

20These estimates hold regional countries' exports constant. The value of pre-UR NTM covered trade in the textile, clothing and agricultural sectors is determined by multiplying the coverage ratio times total trade in the group, and then subtracting the result from total NTM covered trade. These new NTM covered trade values are divided by actual total pre-UR trade values to estimate the post-UR ratios. The resulting coverage ratios are upward biased since they do not account for the increase in ME countries' exports that will result from the liberalization.