Nominal Rate of Assistance (NRA)

NOMINAL RATE OF ASSISTANCE (NRA)

The Consortium’s Nominal Rate of Assistance (NRA) dataset contains a set of measures of the incentives that affect producers’ decision making in agricultural sector. These measures are categorized by their potential economic impacts, with market price support distinguished from payments based on output; payments based on inputs; and payments based on other indicators, such as factors of production, current or past area or livestock numbers.

The NRA dataset thus provides a more complete picture of the extent of producer support to the agricultural sector, compared to Nominal Rate of Protection (NRP) that includes only the Market Price Support (MPS) dimension. These measures are provided in detail for individual commodities, and as aggregates at regional and global level. Additional information on the individual measures and approaches used to aggregate them are provided here.

DETAILS OF NRA MEASURES

We define s, the element of S, the set of policy components composing the farm support: {A1. Market Price Support; A2. Payments based on output; B. Payments based on input use; C. Payments based on current A/An/R/I, production required; D. Payments based on non-current A/An/R/I, production required; E. Payments based on non-current A/An/R/I, production not required; F. Payments based on non-commodity criteria; G. Miscellaneous payments}

We also define the subset P, for payments, that includes: {A2, B, C, D, E, F, G} and O the subset of payments not linked to current production level: {D, E, F, G}

Detailed NRA measures are presented in the dataset for different forms of policy intervention and for commodities to which they provide support. These can be aggregated in different ways, conditional on the purposes for which the results are needed.

The NRA for a country r, year t, and for all products (“Total”) is defined as:

where X denotes the associated transfer from consumers or taxpayers to producers and the denominator shows the value of production valued at farmgate reference prices for product i, in country r, and year t.

Conceptually, the NRA can also usefully be aggregated along the product dimension This provides a measure of total support to producers of a particular product. For product i, the NRA in region r and year t is defined as:

The NRA may also be aggregated by type of intervention, such as payments linked to output, inputs, and other payments.

In the table below we summarize various indicators following OECD’s classification of payments as described in the Producer Support Estimates (PSE) database. We complement the OECD’s PSE database with data from the Inter-American Development Bank’s Agrimonitor program and the FAO MAFAP’s monitoring effort. As in this table, some support can be allocated to individual commodities; some (such as subsidies for veterinary medicines) can only be allocated to broad commodity groups such as livestock; and some (such as tax concessions for farmers) can only be allocated to agriculture as a whole.  However, some payments cannot be allocated to any specific commodity, rather to crops or livestock sector or agricultural as a whole.

Table 1: General classification of payment categories and NRA indicators

Payment Categories Com. 1 Com. 2 Group x Non-MPS Unallocated Total
A1. Market Price Support NRP1 NRP2 N.A. NRPXE NRPT
A2. Payments based on output NRA_Output
B. Payments based on input use NRA_Input
C. Payments based on current A/An/R/I, production required NRA_Others
D. Payments based on non-current A/An/R/I, production required
E. Payments based on non-current A/An/R/I, production not required
F. Payments based on non-commodity criteria
G. Miscellaneous payments
TOTAL by commodity NRA1 NRA 2 NRA XE NRA

 

   

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Suggested Citation

AgIncentives Consortium (2024). https://www.agincentives.org/nominal-rate-of-assistance-nra/  (Accessed on: <date>) based on data from OECD, FAO, IDB and World Bank compiled by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

For an introduction to the database, please see Laborde, D., Lallemant, T., Majeed, F. Mamun, A., Martin, W., and Tokgoz, S. (2024). Introducing the Updated AgIncentives Database. AgIncentives Working Paper, IFPRI, Washington DC.