Authorized Economic Operator Programs
In the Islamic Countries:
Enhancing Customs-Traders Partnership
47
determinants of the number of AEO operators in a country. Morocco is the leading country
among OIC with 439 AEO companies registered. By launching the AEO program in 2006,
Morocco has also the first mover advantage. Turkey is the second country having the highest
number of AEO status holders. Though, many countries initiated the program as late as 2017.
AEO program in Egypt has also more than 100 enrollments by the companies. Despite the early
initiation of the AEO program, the lower number of enrollment in Jordan has several reasons
as will be discussed in Chapter 4. Although Azerbaijan has an active AEO program since 2010,
there are only 2 companies registered, which needs special attention.
AEO programs are distributed almost evenly among different income groups in the OIC region.
However, the number of countries without an AEO program is the highest in low income
countries (Figure 3.7).
Figure 3.7. Number of AEO operators in OIC Countries: Income Category
Source: Authors’ compilation using WCO (2018) data.
3.2 Assessment Approach
3.2.1 Data Collection
OIC member countries exhibit a great degree of heterogeneity in terms of AEO adoption and
implementation as discussed in Section 3.1. In order to document and analyze the current
status of the AEO programs in the OIC members, an extensive amount of data is collected.
Data collection includes surveys distributed online and by e-mail as well as secondary source
analyses (such as collecting information from relevant webpages and quantifying those).
Furthermore, public and private sector interview questionnaires with open-ended questions
2
4
3
3
4
1
3
1
2
1
15
6
9
2
0 5 10 15 20 25
Low income
Lower-middle income
Upper-middle income
High income
Operational AEO
Operational CCP
AEO under development
no AEO & CCP