Reviewing Agricultural Trade Policies
To Promote Intra-OIC Agricultural Trade
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two non-OIC countries, Thailand and Brazil, have preferential trade agreements with 20 and 19
OIC countries, respectively. It is seen that a large number of preferential trade agreements were
signed across the OIC countries as well as OIC and non-OIC countries. As stated above, the
condition of large number of preferential trade agreements for a country may cause negative
consequences known as the spaghetti bowl phenomena where multiple memberships to
different regional trade agreements result in overlapping trade rules. This phenomenon is
particularly seen in Africa, creating discriminating high tariffs applied by the OICmember states.
Another problem with the preferential trade agreements across countries is related to their
potential role in further promotion of intra-OIC trade. The analysis presented in Section 3.4.1
presents potential country matches in order to promote intra-OIC trade in agricultural. The
analysis is done with five selected product divisions for intra-OIC trade promotion (live animals,
meat, sugar, feeding stuff for animals and oil seeds) and potential exporter and importer OIC
countries. Among the matches, the case study countries were examined to see whether there are
any existing preferential trade agreements with any of the potential partner countries. Turkey
and the Gambia are potential importer for live animals. Among the potential exporters, Turkey
has trade agreements with Malaysia and Morocco; the Gambia has a trade agreement with
Burkina Faso. Morocco and the Gambia are potential importers of meat; however, neither
country has any existing preferential trade agreement with potential exporters of meat. A
similar result is seen for sugar and feeding stuff for animals where Morocco is a potential
importer but does not have any ongoing trade agreement with any of the potential export
partners. This mismatch loosely indicates that establishing free trade agreements with a top
trade partner in agricultural trade would promote intra-OIC trade by exploiting the existing
match of mutual benefit with larger trade volumes.
Agricultural reforms and innovative designs
The case study analyses also yield information on the design, implementation and impact of
cases of agricultural reforms and other innovative market institutions. The Plan Vert or the
Green Plan of Morocco is one such example where multi-faceted reform actions helped, with
some success, the smallholders to integrate more strongly with global markets. Turkey’s farmer
registration system and e-commerce infrastructure services are examples of innovative market
institutions for easing market access and information diffusion. A similar situation is seen in the
case of the Gambia where the government of the Gambia prepared a policy paper under the
National Development Plan (NDP) currently led by the Ministry of Finance. The Agricultural and
Natural Resources (ANR) Policy (2017-2026) of The Republic of the Gambia aims for a favorable
environment for agricultural producers with an objective of maximizing poverty reduction. The
vision is a market led commercialized, efficient, competitive, dynamic ANR policy in the context
of sustainable development.
Stakeholder perceptions on promoting intra-OIC agricultural trade
Finally, it should also be underlined that there exist strong expectations for new intra-OIC trade,
investment and economic cooperation agreements that would be mutually beneficial to the
involved parties. Related with this is the strong emphasis put on the crucial role of the TPS-OIC
in establishing trade policy coherence across the OIC, and the overall understanding in the field
is that the process should be accelerated to allow for timely operation of the TPS-OIC.