Dairy trade between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea, with special reference to casein : thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Master of Business Studies at Massey University

Abstract

The purposes of this thesis were firstly, to identify and describe Korean non-tariff and tariff barriers for casein and other dairy products and secondly, to quantify how much New Zealand could gain from a liberalisation of the Korean casein trade. To do this a one-product five-nation quadratic programming model was formulated.

How Korea has become a major trading power through industrialisation, while heavily protecting agriculture is described. Measures of protection, the pressure to liberalise and the Japanese liberalisation experience are discussed.

Casein was chosen because it is the single biggest dairy commodity exported to Korea from New Zealand. The model consists of demand for casein from the major consuming countries (America, Korea and Japan) and fixed supply from the two major suppliers (New Zealand and the European Community). Various scenarios are run to gauge the effect of a drop in tariff rates in Korea and Japan and at various levels of European production.

The study concludes with the recommendation to continue pushing for liberalisation in multilateral and bilateral negotiations particularly with the European Community.