TOKYO, July 9 — Despite an exclusive agricultural market access to the EU in the Japan-EU trade agreement, Japanese farmers still have to tackle non-tariff barriers (NTBs), which is crucial to unlock the potential to boost their exports such as Japanese beef, green tea and dairy products, experts say.
NTB refers to restrictions that result from conditions and specific market requirements that make producers to export difficult and costly.
In the agreement announced earlier this month, the EU will eliminate 98% of the tariffs on Japanese agricultural food products entering the EU, from the day one of the accord coming into force.
Yet, the ability of Japanese agricultural and food exporters to penetrate EU’s giant market is constrained by NTBs such as sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) rules and pesticide residues regulations in food stuffs.
So for example, EU’s tolerance level of pesticide residues for green tea is so rigid, and if producers want to export, they have to go through multiple time-consuming and costly certification process to obtain permits for their pesticide that EU doesn’t have a rule.
Plus, EU currently bans Japanese imports of pork, poultry, eggs and dairy products. That means Japanese process food maker who use Japanese eggs for snacks are unable to export their products to EU as well.
In the trade agreement, EU agreed to eliminate all those tariffs immediately. Tokyo will invite EU inspectors as early as September at Japanese slaughterhouses, hoping it will pave the way to lift the bans on Japanese agricultural meat and dairy products.
Japan’s agricultural food exports totaled 23 billion yen (about 203 million dollars) in 2016, with fishery products standing at 7.6 billion yen, and seasonings and condiments like shoyu at 5.7 billion yen.