` U.K. Drops Tariffs on Tunisian Olive Oil Imports After Signing Trade Deal - Olive Oil Times
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U.K. Drops Tariffs on Tunisian Olive Oil Imports After Signing Trade Deal

By Ephantus Mukundi
Jul. 13, 2021 07:13 UTC
Summary Summary

Tunisian exporters can now sell olive oil in the U.K. duty-free thanks to a trade agree­ment signed in October 2019, as the U.K. sought new trade part­ners ahead of Brexit. The agree­ment allows for 7,723 tons of Tunisian olive oil to be imported into the U.K. with­out tar­iffs each year, with Tunisia export­ing 6,239 tons of olive oil to the U.K. in 2019 and lob­by­ing the E.U. to increase its duty-free quota on imports from the coun­try.

Tunisian exporters can now sell some of their olive oil in the United Kingdom duty-free after an agree­ment between the two coun­tries came into force ear­lier this year.

The agree­ment between Tunisia and the U.K. was signed in October 2019 as the U.K. began look­ing for new trade part­ners ahead of its sep­a­ra­tion from the European Union, a process com­monly known as Brexit.

See Also:Steep Fall in Spanish Olive Oil Exports to U.K. Since Brexit

The trade agree­ment between the U.K. and Tunisia allows for 7,723 tons of Tunisian vir­gin olive oil to be imported with­out tar­iffs each year.

According to the International Trade Center data, Tunisia exported 6,239 tons of olive oil to the U.K. in 2019, the last year for which data are avail­able.

Separate data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity show that between 2009 and 2019, the value of olive oil exports from Tunisia to the U.K. has sky­rock­eted, ris­ing from $62,400 (€45,500) to $4.46 mil­lion (€3.76 mil­lion).

Overall, the U.K. is the twelfth largest des­ti­na­tion for Tunisian olive oil by value glob­ally and the sixth-largest in Europe.

The new free trade agree­ment will be wel­come news to pro­duc­ers, exporters and gov­ern­ment offi­cials, all of whom have been work­ing together to increase the value of Tunisian olive oil exports abroad and raise the country’s inter­na­tional pro­file.

Between November 2020 and April 2021, Tunisia exported 124,700 tons of olive oil val­ued at 991 mil­lion dinars (€303 mil­lion), includ­ing 111,700 tons of olive oil in bulk and 24,000 tons of pack­aged olive oil.

Furthermore, the agree­ment comes as Tunisia con­tin­ues to lobby the E.U. to increase its own duty-free quota on imports from the North African coun­try from 56,700 tons to 100,000 tons.

As the U.K. was pre­vi­ously included in the E.U. quota, the com­ple­tion of Brexit also allows some of the duty-free oils that may have pre­vi­ously headed to the U.K. to go else­where in the 27 mem­ber trad­ing bloc, pri­mar­ily Spain and Itay.

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