Import | EPFL Graph Search

An import is the receiving country in an export from the sending country. Importation and exportation are the defining financial transactions of international trade. In international trade, the importation and exportation of goods are limited by import quotas and mandates from the customs authority. The importing and exporting jurisdictions may impose a tariff (tax) on the goods. In addition, the importation and exportation of goods are subject to trade agreements between the importing and exporting jurisdictions. Imports consist of transactions in goods and services to a resident of a jurisdiction (such as a nation) from non-residents. The exact definition of imports in national accounts includes and excludes specific "borderline" cases. Importation is the action of buying or acquiring products or services from another country or another market other than own. Imports are important for the economy because they allow a country to supply nonexistent, scarce, high cost, or low-quality certain products or services, to its market with products from other countries. A general delimitation of imports in national accounts is given below: An import of a good occurs when there is a change of ownership from a non-resident to a resident; this does not necessarily imply that the good in question physically crosses the frontier. However, in specific cases, national accounts impute changes of ownership even though in legal terms no change of ownership takes place (e.g. cross border financial leasing, cross border deliveries between affiliates of the same enterprise, goods crossing the border for significant processing to order or repair). Also, smuggled goods must be included in the import measurement. Imports of services consist of all services rendered by non-residents to residents. In national accounts any direct purchases by residents outside the economic territory of a country are recorded as imports of services; therefore all expenditure by tourists in the economic territory of another country are considered part of the imports of services.

Electricity supply in West Africa: between bilateral agreements and a single regional market

It is necessary to specify that this study is an academic work carried out by a student as part of his master's project. The hypotheses and reasoning made by the student are at the origin of the results obtained. Energy has a crucial role in the economic development of a nation or region. The states of ECOWAS, have decided to come together to unite for this challenge and offer quality services to the population. WAPP, a specialized institution, decides to interconnect networks in order to pool the resources of the electricity market and offers quality access at a competitive price to the population. It is therefore necessary to strengthen production, distribution and transmission capacities to ensure the coordination of electricity exchanges between member countries. This study initially consisted in setting up a methodology explaining the progressive approaches that are applied throughout the project. The strategies for expanding the fleet are each analysed: the self-sufficiency strategy including existing imports and bilateral agreements, the strategy applied by WAPP along with variants involving the share of local production for importing countries. The expansion analysis is done with the support of the PlanElec software. An economic and technical comparison is then made on these two strategies, based on the different costs, the different investments, the installed powers by type and the energy produced. It can be seen that the more the share of local production increases for importing countries, the more interesting the weighted cost of production becomes. But this has a limit demonstrated by the autarkic strategy. Indeed, the countries considered as importers use imports and their weighted cost of production is lower than with a local production share imposed. From a global economic point of view, it is more interesting to rely on the major energy powers of the sub-region. With this study, it has been shown that it is more interesting for countries to turn to an open market policy, dependent on the major powers of the region, although politically no country wishes to be totally dependent on another.

2019

Electricity supply in West Africa: between bilateral agreements and a single regional market

2019