One of the first actions of the new Foreign Trade Minister, Pablo Campana, was the elimination of safeguards that, according to the established schedule, will cease to be in force as of tomorrow.

"We have signed and sent a letter to the National Customs Service to cancel the last third that would be pending," confirmed the Minister.

The dismantling of this third tranche began last April lowering the tariff by 35% and 15% to 23.3% and 10%. Among the products that will pay less tariff are appliances, clothes, apples, thin cuts of meat and vodka. 

Since the first of May, the 10% surcharge has already been reduced to 5%, while the 23.3% surcharge has decreased to 11.7%. The measure amounts to 2,152 tariff subheadings, which will be released from tomorrow. Cucumbers, pickles, mineral water, wine, malt beer, creams, bitumen, among others, are included in the list of products that suffered price increases for safeguards.

This measure was taken with the aim of reducing imports and, thus, avoiding the outflow of foreign exchange. The results, during the two years of validity of this measure was the fall in imports by 24%.

A calculation by the Chamber of Commerce of Quito reveals that between March 2015 and March 2017 imports, including taxable and non-taxed goods, were reduced by 9,753 million and of that figure, 3,644 million were for goods with safeguards.