Before going into the details of the results of convergence analysis, it is important to

understand the economic diversity of countries with operational AEO programs in terms of

their size, trade openness and trade intensity at their border check points as these three may

have been important in the AEO adoption. Granted, safety and security are among the most

important determinants of AEO adoption. However, it is notoriously difficult to measure the

safety and security of a country due to measurement issues using the available data. Therefore,

to have a preliminary understanding of economic diversity, one can review these three

measures briefly.

Table 3.5. General Overview of Survey Respondents, 2017

GDP

(in billions of USD)

Trade Openness

Average Trade Intensity at

Border Checkpoints

(in billions of USD)

Egypt

237

32%

Indonesia

1,011

30%

Jordan

40.5

62%

2.3

Morocco

111

53%

1.2

Oman

71.9

76%

2.1

Tunisia

39.9

85%

1.3

Turkey

841

42%

1.9

Uganda

26.4

30%

0.4

Source: Authors’ compilation using survey data and WDI.

Table 3.5 shows that there is a great degree of variability in terms of economic size (proxied by

GDP), trade openness (proxied by [Exports+Imports]/GDP) and trade intensity (proxied by

[Exports+Imports]/#Border Checkpoints) across the group of OIC members that adopted AEO

programs. Economic size ranges between $26.4 million to $1 billion while trade openness

ranges from 30 percent to 85 percent. With the exception of Uganda, AEO holders in OIC have

average trade intensities ranging across $1.2 million to $2.3 million.

Next, survey results are presented under 7 themes. This can be considered as a horizontal

reading of the comparator matrix.

Theme 1: General information on the AEO program

The general information about the AEO program has two counterparts: sectors and types of

operators. The convergence percentage for the

sectors of the AEO

program variable is 55

percent. The variable in regards to

types of operators

has a 66 percent convergence across

OIC. The relevant and more detailed information is as follows:

A diverse set of sectors are represented in the various AEO programs within OIC. First of all,

every AEO program includes the manufacturing sector. Energy is the least represented sector

while Transportation/Storage are present in 63 percent of the programs (Figure 3.8).