Tariffs on chicken and rice imported into the country will be lowered

Santo Domingo, DR
In 2023 and 2024, goods of great importance for the Dominican population, such as chicken and rice, will enter into further tariff reduction processes (dismantling of customs tariffs), which shows that the free market agreed upon in the DR-Cafta is practically on its final route.

Only 13 tariff lines (agricultural products) remain pending free trade.

Chicken thighs, in parts or united, polished, husked, milled, whitened, with husk, and other items will enter paying 23.76% of tariffs in 2023 and 11.88% in the following year to end at 0% in 2025 when all goods will enter free trade (tariff-free).

The Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (DR-Cafta) was signed on August 5, 2004, and entered into force in 2006, although the country ratified it in 2007.

This is because the agreement, which contains 22 chapters, imposes that for customs tariff payments purposes, the signatory countries must follow the date of the first country that put it into effect. In this case, El Salvador was the first to enter in 2007.

The agreement was signed by the United States and the five Central American countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras, plus the Dominican Republic, each with a list of protection of essential goods for the population to be treated individually.

The Dominican Republic maintained the protection of agricultural goods covered by the 1999 Technical Rectification, negotiated in 1986 for fear of eliminating its advantages through the CBI, known as the Caribbean Basin Initiative.

The CBI covered the protection allowed by the United States for eight agricultural goods, such as rice, milk, sugar, chicken, beans, oil, garlic, and onions, in the case of the Dominican Republic.

The agreement provides for reductions in the preferential tariffs of the products included in the F and V baskets until reaching zero in 2025 when the negotiated tariff reduction schedule ends.

Pending

As of 2025, the Treaty remains in force with the particularity that all goods entering the Dominican market, as long as they comply with the DR-Cafta transformation requirements, will be in free trade.

These baskets cover 13 products representing 0.2% of the total tariff lines negotiated in the Treaty, as explained in a response on the course of the DR-Cafta scheduled by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and Mipymes (DR-Cafta).