/10.
5-8 of the U.K. statistical classification) were worth $262m.
It would, therefore, appear sensible to select a number of
sensitive items on which duty quotas would be enforced and to
allow other preferential imports from the beneficiaries to enter
without control and without any special statistical monitoring.
A list of U.K. sensitive items would have to be compiled and
be comparable in the number of items and the coverage in trade
with the EEC's list, assuming that the EECS list becomes publicly
available. As long as the general coverage and totals of trade
were roughly comparable, there would be no need for the lists
to contain identical products; it is unlikely that all the items
we might regard as sensitive from non-Commonwealth developing
countries would be identical with the EEC's list. Assuming, then,
that in practice duty quotas will be enforced on only a restricted number of tariff headings (the tentative list proposed
by the EEC Commission - which is likely to be their minimum
requirements and will probably be greatly expanded
abuse.
contains
18 separate tariff headings), we must decide whether to administer
the control by means of import licences up to the amount of the
annual quota or alternatively by allowing imports freely until
the quotas are filled and then imposing the full rate of duty.
Any system of import licencing is expensive in administration
irritating for traders and likely to cause difficulties and
On the other hand, it enables the volume of imports to
be controlled precisely; adopting the other technique would have
the consequence that developing exporters of a competitive
product would not be able to know before shipping their goods
whether they would be liable for duty on arrival at a U.K.Port
or would be admitted duty free. There would clearly be plenty
of scope for disagreement about liability for duty and for
friction with beneficiary countries about the way in which the
quotas were administered. Arrangements would also have to be
made for a continuous scrutiny of imports of the sensitive items
/but