lected tariff revenue and tariff exemptions, as well as all additional charges applied at the border. The data also include information on customs procedure codes (CPC), which allow us to exclude imports from the data set that do not enter the Syrian market for the sole purpose of private domestic consumption.<sup>10</sup> asycuda has, to date, only been partially implemented. According to the Customs directorate, the system covered 75% of all Syrian imports in January 2009. This share has been steadily increasing since, reaching 85% in June 2009, and is expected to have attained almost full coverage (98%) by the end of 2009. For the purpose of this study, this data limitation is not unproblematic. However, Syrian customs authorities have verified that the data present a fairly representative sample of imports across products and trading partners.<sup>11</sup> The data set comprises Syrian imports on a total of 3,183 tariff lines and 126 trading partners. The total value of imports amounts to SYP 607.3 billion. On these imports, SYP 39.3 billion worth of tariff revenue and SYP 66.8 billion worth of overall trade tax revenue (including tariff revenue) were collected. Collected tariff revenue thus makes up 58.9% of overall trade tax revenue. The statutory tariff rate across all tariff lines, calculated as a simple average, is 11.1% (the import-weighted average is 7.0%). The equivalent numbers for the collected tariff rate are 10.7% and 6.5%, respectively. These figures suggest that tariff exemptions granted at the Syrian border are substantial, although not excessively large compared with other middle-income economies. A simple simulation using the model described in Section 2 shows that a trade reform that eliminates all tariff exemptions would increase Syrian tariff revenue by about SYP 2.6 billion, which is equivalent to 6.5% of the current total.<sup>12</sup> Table 1 illustrates how tariffs are distributed across tariff bands for trading partners with whom Syria is currently not involved in a preferential trade agreement.<sup>13</sup> The table differentiates 11 tariff bands that correspond to the 11 actual bands in the Syrian tariff schedule (1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60%). As can be seen, the distribution of statutory tariffs is highly skewed. Almost 60% of tariff lines are subject to nuisance

> 10These include, for example, goods in transit, government imports, and goods destined for warehousing.

> 11It is possible to make simple extrapolations, based on our knowledge of the extent of coverage across time, in order to recover reasonable numbers that are applicable at the national level for the full calendar year. More specifically, given the preceding discussion, we suggest a multiplication factor close to two for all numbers not expressed in percentage terms.

> 12As will become clear, our explicit accounting for tariff exemptions is central to our study of fiscal costs. The importance of the careful treatment of import concessions for studies analyzing trade policy changes is a general point that has been previously emphasized by Ianchovichina (2004).

> 13Notice that this implies that the total of 2,895 tariff lines is lower in this table than the total across all countries (3,183 tariff lines) including those in preferential trade agreements with Syria.

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