§ Mr. Chris SmithTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what studies his Department has conducted to identify the effects on United Kingdom national income, in real terms, of the signing of the GATT treaty as currently envisaged.
§ Mr. NelsonThe World Bank/OECD recently published a study which estimated that the gain to world real income resulting from a successful GATT round could be just over $200 billion—1992 prices—by the year 2002. Within this, the EC was estimated to get a very substantial gain of around $80 billion.
These figures may well underestimate the full benefit as the study does not take account of the removal of non-tariff barriers, liberalisation of trade in services or dynamic and confidence gains from a successful conclusion to the round. Nor does it take account of the adverse impact on national incomes that would arise if failure of the round resulted in a deterioration in the world trading environment.