Now Morocco and the US have completed negotiations on a Free Trade
Agreement (FTA) that would help stimulate further reforms in agriculture. The hope and
expectation is that the reforms taken to date plus additional reforms linked to the FTA
will increase productivity and efficiency in Moroccan agriculture and thus lead to higher
growth and economic and social well-being. Analysis of the impacts of the FTA is one
input into the process of understanding the consequences of the agreement.
To address these issues and other questions that are connected to the direct and
indirect effects of alternative policies on the agricultural and food sectors, a computable
general equilibrium model (CGE) is used to highlight the incidence of protection
changes on the variables of interest. Such variables include mainly domestic agricultural
and food supply, imports and exports, terms of trade, economic growth, and welfare
issues. CGE models are considered as the most appropriate analytical framework for
trade policy analysis because they capture the interaction among all sectors of the
economy. The present research has been conducted using the Global Trade Analysis
Project (GTAP) analytical framework and data set (see Hertel and Tsigas, 1997).