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 he Information Technology Agreement (ITA) Plus, issued on September 4, 2002, is the response from the Mexican government to the World Trade Organization's ITA. The ITA is an agreement under the WTO, signed by 56 countries, that eliminates tariffs to a group of computer and telecommunication products as well as to their sub-assemblers.
Mexico's ITA Plus, like the international ITA, eliminates tariffs on imports worldwide for the following goods:
Computer products (computers, monitors, printers, scanners)
Telecommunication products (modems, cellular phones, office switching equipment, switching transmission equipment, audio & video)
Other Electronic goods (calculators, photocopy machines, cash registers).
Mexico's ITA Plus will have the effect of lowering prices for electronic products so that companies of all sizes and sectors will benefit. In addition, the economy as a whole will increase its productivity and competitiveness.
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This program will promote the international competitiveness not only for computer and telecommunications sectors, but for the entire electronics industry including consumer products (TV's, radios, CD equipment, videos). Another objective of Mexico's ITA Plus is to maintain the tariff throughout the supply chain in order to encourage additional production of sub-assemblers and electronic components.
What are the comparative advantages of Mexico's ITA Plus over ITA?
ITA Plus reaches out to more of the supply chain since it includes raw materials used by component producers (i.e.steel, chemicals). As regards to the consumer electronic products, it frees up the whole production chain of inputs including raw materials.
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ITA Plus consists of two packages:
1) to eliminate tariffs on computer and telecommunications parts, components and finished products for all importers;
2) to eliminate tariffs on inputs, parts and components under the electronics PROSEC (only implemented for electronics).
The ITA Plus package 1 will eliminate tariffs of 290 codes and will apply to three groups:
Group 1: Telecommunications and computer parts and components (September 2002)
Group 2: Computer final goods
(Yr. 2003)
Group 3: Telecommunications final goods
(Yr. 2004)
Accordingly, ITA Plus package 2 eliminates tariffs on raw materials and inputs of other sectors such as steel, plastics, and chemical products that are only to be used by the electronics, computer, and telecommunications firms. These products were included in the electronics PROSEC (278 tariff codes). Tariffs on almost 4,000 codes will be eliminated at different stages of time.
The Federal Government along
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