ABSTRACT
Inconsistent trade policies have characterised Nigeria’s rice importation, leading to planning and decision-making challenges for producers and consumers, and with fluctuating consequences on welfare status. However, studies on Rice Trade Policy (RTP) have been carried out within the partial equilibrium framework which do not reveal the welfare effects on all sectors and households in the economy. For effective RTP, an understanding of the economy-wide welfare effects is necessary which is possible within a general equilibrium framework. The economy-wide welfare effects of RTPs on households in Nigeria were therefore investigated. Value of domestic production, inputs and intermediate products were obtained from Nigerian Institute for Social and Economic Research’s Input-Output (I-O) table. From the I-O, the economy was grouped into rice, Other Agriculture (OA), Oil and Mining (OM) and Manufacturing and Services (MS) sectors. Household incomes were collected from National Bureau of Statistics’ Nigerian Living Standards Survey (NLSS). From NLSS, households were classified into Rural North Household (RNH), Rural South Household (RSH), Urban North Household (UNH) and Urban South Household (USH). Value of imports and import charges, as measures of Import Tax (IT), were gathered from the Central Bank of Nigeria’s trade summary. All data were for year 2004. Two trade protection policy instruments: Import Ban (IB) and Eighty Percent Tariff Increase (EPTI); and two trade liberalisation policy instruments: Five Percent Tariff Reduction (FPTR) and Tariff Elimination (TE) were identified for simulation.