Dominican Republic Issues Dry Bean Tariff Quotas

In the first two months of the marketing year, the U.S. exported 4,602 MT of dry beans to the Dominican Republic. That compares to 4,941 MT over the first two months of 2016/17. Licenses for 2018 duty-free imports under the DR-CAFTA Tariff Rate Quota (TRQ) were supposed to be issued on December 18 but were not issued until the first week of January 2018. Additionally, importers had not yet used their entire 2017 quota allocations, which can result in a lower allocation in 2018.

As noted, the Dominican Republic issued the 2018 U.S. Dry Bean TRQ allocations the first week of January. As stipulated in the DR-CAFTA Free Trade Agreement, 15,280 MT of dry beans can enter the country duty-free from January 1 through December 31, 2018. The government allocated 10,312 MT of the total to the traditional (and largest) six dry bean importers and the remaining 4,968 MT is divided among 85 small importers. We expect to see exports from the U.S. pick up in the next months.