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Reviewing Agricultural Trade Policies

To Promote Intra-OIC Agricultural Trade

2

The results from an online survey on intra-OIC agricultural trade policies indicate that

agricultural trade is seen as an important driver of overall development and food

security. Three factors that are emphasized more by the survey participants as among

the ones adversely affecting agricultural trade flows are (i) the very poor status of

marketing knowledge and information, (ii) the very poor status of financial resources,

and (iii) the very poor status of technical adaptability of producers. The standardization

of the products is also seen as a problem area. Survey results also confirm Saudi Arabia’s

and Turkey’s agricultural import and export hub roles within the OIC, respectively.

These two countries are accompanied by non-OIC partners Russia, Germany and China

both for the current and for the future agricultural trade relationships.

An observation worth mentioning in the study concerns the significance of smallholder

farming practices across the OIC. The scale problem in agriculture prevents large

segments of the rural population from reaping the benefits of productivity advantages

associated with larger production scales, including international competitiveness in

many OIC countries. Access to credit and information is particularly challenging for

smallholders. Cost disadvantages, barriers against modernization, and other supply

chain issues act as significant barriers to access to global markets (particularly to global

markets for products in the higher end of value chains).

Another result that emerged out of the field visits completed in three case study

countries (the Gambia, Morocco and Turkey) is that there is a common understanding

among stakeholders from different member countries to the effect that cooperation and

coordination among OIC member countries in the area of agricultural trade would be

mutually (even multilaterally) beneficial.

The review and analysis also indicate that many OIC countries have problems

concerning data availability and data reliability in the realm of agricultural trade flows

and agricultural trade policy measures (including both the tariff rates and the NTMs).

More specifically, commonly referenced international databases that collect and publish

statistics on tariff rates and NTMs at product division and product levels do not cover

the statistics of most recent years for many OIC countries.

Building on these results, the following policy recommendations are formulated to help promote

intra-OIC agricultural trade in the near future.

The main policy recommendation that would promote intra-OIC trade in agricultural

products is the establishment of Free Trade Areas first at the three regional groups level

and then for the entire OIC. As explained in detail in Chapter 5, multiple membership to

different regional trade agreements result in crisscrossing, creating the “spaghetti bowl”

phenomenon signaled by Bhagwati (1995). This has the effect of creating discriminating

high tariffs applied by OIC member countries to others which are excluded from the

existing regional trade agreements with non-OIC countries. One should keep in mind

that Article XXIV of GATT opens the way to FTAs or customs unions, at the condition of

non-discrimination and in line with the GATT utmost aim of liberalizing trade at global

scale. A closer look on the existing agreements and their exceptions / exclusions /

sensitivities shows that they are far from achieving that aim and should not be a barrier

to new, larger integration efforts which will require in any case the approval of the

related WTO committees (UNCTAD 2016). It should be noted that difficulties associated

with the rules of origin could be overcome by the four basic principles of the WTO’s