Proceedings of the 13 th Meeting of the
COMCEC Agriculture Working Group
11
According to the figures, agricultural export and import shares of the OIC remained roughly around
10% and 15%, respectively. After emphasizing that the Asian group has the largest export shares
in all three broad product categories and the Arab group has the largest import shares in agri-food
and fish products, Prof. SAYAN presented some treemap figures that show the prominent export
and import products of the three regional groups of the OIC vis-à-vis the non-0IC countries. He also
underlined that, as of 2016, the Asian group’s imports largely originated from other Asian group
countries (21%), and the Arab group’s exports largely destined to other Arab group countries
(47%).
As in the case of global agricultural trade policies, Prof. SAYAN emphasized the importance of tariff
protection issues. He first summarized trade-weighted average tariff rates of each regional group
for each of the three broad product categories (agri-food, fish, and agricultural raw products).
Comparing the tariffs imposed on the OIC countries with those imposed on non-OIC countries show
that, while there does not exist large differences for any of the product categories, there exists high
tariff protection in (i) African markets for agri-food products, (ii) Arab markets for agricultural raw
materials, and (iii) Asia markets, again, for agricultural raw materials. Tariff differences are much
more pronounced once calculated for all agricultural products and compared with those imposed
on all non-OIC countries. Prof. SAYAN emphasized that average tariffs imposed by the African group
countries to Arab and Asian exporters exceed the average tariffs imposed on non-OIC exporters. A
similar observation was made for Asian and Arab groups such that these two groups on average
impose higher than non-OIC tariffs to each other in agricultural products.
Prof. SAYAN drew particular attention to the trade agreements of the OIC member countries. In
terms of preferential trade agreements, a large number of OIC members (18) have less than 4 PTAs
with fellow OIC countries and no OIC country has more than 20 PTAs with fellow OIC members.
Prof. SAYAN also presented the results of the quadrant analysis that identifies the product divisions
that exhibit greatest potential to promote intra-OIC agricultural trade. The analysis identified
“Feeding Stuff for Animals,” “Meat,” “Sugars,” “Live Animals,” and “Oil Seeds” as the most prominent
products. Prof. SAYAN compared the within-bloc tariff rates of these products for the OIC and other
trade blocs, highlighting that the situation for the OIC is especially worrisome for “Feeding Stuff for
Animals” and “Oil Seeds.” He also mentioned that the existing set of trade agreements among OIC
member countries covers only a small fraction of all the potential exporter-importer matches for
these products.
After sharing some of the results originating from the evaluation of the online survey, Prof. SAYAN
focused on the main lessons learned from the overview and analysis of global and OIC agricultural
trade policies. He reiterated that low income countries in general need to focus on increasing
productivity in agriculture and design appropriate agricultural trade policies. He also touched upon
the research findings such as
 the agricultural trade deficit of the OIC as a whole,
 the spaghetti bowl phenomenon caused by the OIC countries’ commitments to third
parties in terms of trade agreements, and
 data reliability and availability issues.
In conclusion, Prof. SAYAN summarized the main challenges faced by the OIC member countries for
policy making in intra-OIC agricultural trade. These include:
 the large number of trade agreements with non-OIC countries,