List III
Cover Note to
Provisional U.K. Offer on Processed Agricultural Goods in
Chapters EN 1-24
The U.K.'s offer on processed agricultural goods in Chapters BN 1-24 is
attached. In general the offer would be to grant duty free access, but for a
few products, indicated in the footnotes to the offer, it would be of a 50 per
cent out or a reduction to the Commonwealth preferential rate of duty. Quantita-
tive and other restrictions will still apply to a few items in the offer and
details of these are also given in the footnotes. The offer is, however,
provisional, both in the context of the further discussions that will need to
be held in OECD on the processed agricultural part of the preferences scheme
and also in the context of the rate of progress towards settling the outstanding
issues on the industrial side of the scheme.
2. As the United Kingdom Government has made clear from the outset, implemen-
tation of the offer is also conditional on our gaining the consent of countries
in the Commonwealth Preference Area with trade agreement rights to margins of
preference on certain products to waive these rights to the extent required to
enable preferences on these products to be extended to non-Commonwealth develop-
ing countries.
November, 1969