Impacts of import restrictions on poultry producers in Ghana

Abstract

Abstract This paper investigates the potential effects of trade restrictions and alternative tariff policies, including a tariff wedge between feed and final products on the Ghanaian poultry producers. We apply a hybrid approach that uses qualitative results of a Delphi study to define scenarios for a modified global general equilibrium model. The projected production changes are then used as inputs into a typical farm analysis that disentangles the effects for broiler farm types in Ghana. The effect of expanding a tariff wedge between final and feed products by 5 per cent, either through increasing the tariff rates of the final product or through abolishing the tariffs on feed products, is small in our case. However, increasing the tariff rate of the final product to the maximum level of bound tariff (i.e. 99 per cent) or a complete ban has a larger effect on domestic production. It increases the production by 104 per cent and up to 254 per cent, respectively. The typical farm analysis reveals that large-scale farms are better positioned to increase production than small and medium farm types.