Reviewing Agricultural Trade Policies
To Promote Intra-OIC Agricultural Trade
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countries should pay particular attention to policies that would support the effective
sharing of best-practice cases in agriculture and agricultural trade.
8. Statistical capacity with regard to agricultural trade flows and policy measures:
SESRIC has two specialized divisions working on agriculture and trade statistics, and
ICDT has web portals such as the OIC Trade Map. However, new projects should be
designed and conducted (i) to thoroughly identify the data availability and reliability
problems in agricultural trade policy measures all across the OIC and (ii) to develop
institutional reform agendas that would help the OIC member countries alleviate the
existing capability problems in the near future. A more specific policy action may be
establishing a new division on agricultural trade policy measures within SESRIC and
benefiting from this organ’s established capacities in data collecting and dissemination.
9. Directed research in agricultural trade policy analysis: The existing research
outputs obtained through the commissioned studies by the trade and agriculture
working groups of COMCEC are highly illuminating for a large set of structural problems
faced by the OICmember countries. But these two working groups shouldwork together
with an understanding that evaluates trade as a whole and treat agricultural trade as a
subset of overall trade. One research question that should be targeted with this broad
view is concerned with the tariff equivalents of NTMs. A well-structured project should
aim at calculating these tariff equivalents for a sufficiently large set of products and
countries. The methodologies explained and exemplified in WTO’s (2012) A Practical
Guide to Trade Policy Analysis may be used to structure such a research project. Another
way to go forward is to develop and analyze general equilibriummodels of trade policies
and trade integration both within the OIC and between the OIC and non-OIC countries.