Countries by Binding coverage, all products (%)
Four countries — Congo, Dem. Rep., Tajikistan, Trinidad and Tobago, and Yemen — each record a binding coverage rate of 100%, meaning every product line in their tariff schedules carries an agreed bound rate. At the other end, 100 countries record exactly 0%, including the United States, Germany, China, and India. That gap of 100 percentage points separates the full range of outcomes in this dataset.
Ranking 2022
Values shown in %.
Analysis
Binding coverage measures the share of a country's tariff product lines that carry a legally committed maximum rate. As defined by the World Bank World Development Indicators (indicator TM.TAX.MRCH.BC.ZS): binding coverage is the percentage of product lines with an agreed bound rate. Bound rates result from trade negotiations incorporated into a country's schedule of concessions and are thus enforceable. Values are expressed as a percentage, where 100% means every product line is covered by an enforceable ceiling rate and 0% means none are. The dataset covers 161 countries using data from 2022, with 97.5% of entries drawn from the last seven years and 100% classified as official data. No extreme outliers were detected at the 3-standard-deviation threshold.
The top of the ranking is dominated by a mix of developing economies and former Soviet states. Congo, Dem. Rep., Tajikistan, Trinidad and Tobago, and Yemen all achieve exactly 100% (rank 1). A large cluster of 24 countries follows at rank 5 with 99.98%, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Ukraine, and the Russian Federation, among others. Cabo Verde, Jordan, Samoa, and Venezuela share rank 29 at 99.96%. These high-ranking countries have near-complete coverage of bound tariff lines across all product categories.
Coverage drops sharply below the top tier. Israel ranks 47th at 75.81%, Singapore ranks 48th at 71.95%, and the Philippines ranks 49th at 62.15%. Tunisia sits at rank 50 with 58.25%, followed by Fiji at 51.52% (rank 51). The steepest drop occurs between Mozambique at rank 61 with 14.92% and the large group of 100 countries tied at rank 62 with 0%. Countries in that 0% group include major economies such as Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as many low-income African and Asian nations.
The 0% value recorded for 100 countries is the most significant limitation of this dataset. A recorded value of 0% does not necessarily mean a country has no bound tariff commitments; it may reflect reporting gaps, methodological differences in how schedules are submitted or categorized, or the way the World Bank constructs this indicator for certain country groups, including EU member states that negotiate as a bloc. The metric also does not capture applied tariff rates, which can differ substantially from bound rates. Bound rates set a ceiling, not actual policy. Year-over-year volatility averaged 9.2%, which is within acceptable bounds, but individual country values can shift as trade schedules are renegotiated or newly submitted.
Methodology
Data source: World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code TM.TAX.MRCH.BC.ZS. The metric is defined as follows (source note verbatim): binding coverage is the percentage of product lines with an agreed bound rate. Bound rates result from trade negotiations incorporated into a country's schedule of concessions and are thus enforceable. The unit is percentage (%), where higher values indicate greater coverage. The dataset covers 161 countries, exceeding the 80-country viability threshold. Data year is 2022; 157 of 161 countries (97.5%) have data from within the last seven years, and 84.5% of entries use 2022 as the latest available year. All 161 datapoints (100%) are classified as official quality. No extreme outliers were found using a 3-standard-deviation threshold. The average year-over-year change was 9.2%, well within the 50% volatility threshold. The full value range spans 0% to 100%, a spread of 100 percentage points. No microstates (population under 1 million) appear in the dataset.