Gains of international trade are largely based on the absence of trade restrictions among trading countries. The perceived advantage of a steady decrease in tariffs worldwide was unfortunately progressively replaced by non-tariff measures (NTMs) globally. The impact of these NTMs is, however, not exactly clear as it appears in sometimes a much disguised manner. NTMs seem to be very important in limiting the flow of imports to trading countries, although accurately measuring the effects of it is fairly difficult. The purpose of this article is to estimate the impact of NTMs on the volume of trade in Mauritius. The 20 major export destinations of Mauritius are analyzed to determine the impact of tariffs and NTMs on the exports from Mauritius. Using the trade freedom scores as proxy for trade restrictions, it has been established that Mauritius’ volume of export flows are much lower due to the NTMs applied by its importing trading partners.
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