Reviewing Agricultural Trade Policies
To Promote Intra-OIC Agricultural Trade
169
Chapter 5: Conclusion and Policy Recommendations
The review of agricultural trade policies in the OIC member countries presented in this report
point to a number of conclusions and policy lessons, further supported by quantitative and
qualitative results obtained in the study. These conclusions and lessons are closely linked to the
effects of trade policy instruments such as tariff protection, NTMs, and trade agreements.
Domestic policies also matter, however, as indicated by stakeholder responses to the online
survey, as well as in-depth interviews and case studies conducted. All evidence commonly
indicate, for example, that the structural problems faced by smallholder farmers pose significant
challenges even in the largest agricultural exporters of the OIC.
This concluding section of the report presents a summary of quantitative and qualitative results
obtained, and policy lessons drawn from these results. The section also discusses the policy
recommendations to promote intra-OIC trade in agricultural products.
5.1. A Summary of the Results
The first thing that is obvious from a review of current policies is high tariff protection on critical
product divisions and products which could potentially serve to increase intra-OIC agricultural
trade. Sugars and oil seeds are two such product divisions where potential exporter countries
face high applied tariffs imposed by potential importers within the OIC. The same situation
applies to numerous products at the product level for the top export products of the OIC
countries.
Another noteworthy result is the fact that some critical product divisions such as meat is not
particularly prone to high tariff protection but still has a low share within OIC imports. Thus,
NTMs may also be important in limiting intra-OIC agricultural trade in certain products.
A low propensity of trade agreements within the OIC and associated high propensity of trade
agreements with non-OIC countries is clearly a factor that should be emphasized as a factor that
adversely affects the volume of intra-OIC agricultural trade. While the OIC countries that are
present members of ECOWAS or Pan-Arab Free Trade Area are more integrated than other OIC
member countries in terms of the number of trade agreements currently in force, some OIC
countries have only a few trade agreements with other OIC countries. The agreement coverage
for the potential exporter-importer matches in most of the key product divisions is alarmingly
low.
In addition to these quantitative results, the analysis and review also yielded some qualitative
results that are illuminating in interesting ways. One such result is related with the significance
of smallholder farming practices across the OIC. Fragmented lands pose a challenge for many
OIC countries to increase agricultural productivity. As expected, the smallholder farmers have
difficulties in accessing credit and information. These naturally lead to low or no interaction
with global markets both because of the cost disadvantage and because of the lack of technical
capabilities.
Another qualitative result worth mentioning is that there exists a common understanding
among the stakeholders that cooperation and coordination among OIC member countries in the
sphere of agricultural trade would be multilaterally beneficial.
It must be noted, however, that the OIC-wide analysis and review of policies in Chapter 3, and
case studies in Chapter 4 indicate that there exist serious 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